30,000 year old giant virus uncovered by scientists

A team of French scientists has discovered a 30,000 year old virus in the Siberian Permafrost, due to climate change and an ancient squirrel. The finding was also facilitated by global warming as it is melting the Arctic permafrost. The permafrost contains consists of potentially all sorts of bad and very strange things waiting to be revived, an example could be giant viruses. The virus that has been uncovered by the scientists belongs to the same sample of 30,000 year old permafrost that was once home to Pithovirus sibericum, which is the largest virus to be discovered till date. From a single sample of Siberian permafrost, the scientists had managed to dig out Pithovirus sibericum last year. The recent virus to be discovered has been named Mollivirus sibericum and its detailed description has been given in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Both of these are examples of giant viruses as they can be seen easily with the help of an optical microscope.

The reviving of the viruses could be harmful for humans but according to an AFP report, the reviving work was done in a top secret CDC lab. The microbiologists behind the project comprised mainly from the institutes of France and Russia and assured that before waking a virus up, they need to establish if it is harmful to humans or not. This step is accomplished by using the virus to infect single-celled amoeba which servers as its host. The co-author of the study, Jean-Michel Claverie told AFP,” A few viral particles that are still infectious may be enough, in the presence of a vulnerable host, to revive potentially pathogenic viruses. If we are not careful and industrialize there areas without putting safeguards in place, we run the risk of one day waking up viruses such as small pox that we thought were eradicated.”

Mollivirus sibericum is the fourth known giant virus and all of them belong to the pre-historic times. The first giant virus was discovered in 2003 with the identification of the Mimivirus family, enormous viruses that were first isolated in 1992. The Mimiviruses come equipped with a startling 979 protein-encoding genes which is a lot more than found in many of the other viruses. After these the Pandoviruses and Megaviruses came along. These were isolated from the water samples taken from Chile and Australia. So far, this family offers the largest amount of viral genomes at 2,556 protein encoding genes.

Image Source: Telegraph.co.uk