We've all heard by now that perhaps there was a lab leak leading to the COVID pandemic. Not that they know for sure. But the Department of Defense believes it could have happened. But it also could have come from the wet market in Wuhan, in which multiple species of animals and their body fluids were present. Because what is pretty well known is that the virus was zoonotic in origin, whether it came from the lab or the market.
Which is why I was not thrilled to read this article: Viruses in permafrost: Scientists have revived a 'zombie' virus that spent 48,500 years frozen | CNN
Warmer temperatures in the Arctic are thawing the region’s permafrost — a frozen layer of soil beneath the ground — and potentially stirring viruses that, after lying dormant for tens of thousands of years, could endanger animal and human health.
While a pandemic unleashed by a disease from the distant past sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie, scientists warn that the risks, though low, are underappreciated. Chemical and radioactive waste that dates back to the Cold War, which has the potential to harm wildlife and disrupt ecosystems, may also be released during thaws.
“There’s a lot going on with the permafrost that is of concern, and (it) really shows why it’s super important that we keep as much of the permafrost frozen as possible,” said Kimberley Miner, a climate scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.
"...To better understand the risks posed by frozen viruses, Jean-Michel Claverie, an Emeritus professor of medicine and genomics at the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine in Marseille, France, has tested earth samples taken from Siberian permafrost to see whether any viral particles contained therein are still infectious. He’s in search of what he describes as “zombie viruses” — and he has found some."
In 2014, he managed to revive a virus he and his team isolated from the permafrost, making it infectious for the first time in 30,000 years by inserting it into cultured cells. For safety, he’d chosen to study a virus that could only target single-celled amoebas, not animals or humans.
"...He repeated the feat in 2015, isolating a different virus type that also targeted amoebas. And in his latest research, published February 18 in the journal Viruses, Claverie and his team isolated several strains of ancient virus from multiple samples of permafrost taken from seven different places across Siberia and showed they could each infect cultured amoeba cells."
"...That amoeba-infecting viruses are still infectious after so long is indicative of a potentially bigger problem, Claverie said. He fears people regard his research as a scientific curiosity and don’t perceive the prospect of ancient viruses coming back to life as a serious public health threat."
“We view these amoeba-infecting viruses as surrogates for all other possible viruses that might be in the permafrost,” Claverie told CNN."
"...An anthrax outbreak in Siberia that affected dozens of humans and more than 2,000 reindeer between July and August in 2016 has also been linked to the deeper thawing of the permafrost during exceptionally hot summers, allowing old spores of Bacillus anthracis to resurface from old burial grounds or animal carcasses."
"Birgitta Evengård, professor emerita at Umea University’s Department of Clinical Microbiology in Sweden, said there should be better surveillance of the risk posed by potential pathogens in thawing permafrost, but warned against an alarmist approach."
Well, forgive me if I do feel a bit alarmist about this stuff. Since we know that it is at least in the realm of possibility that lab accidents can occur, I hope that every precaution and security measure is being observed in the study of these organisms. The last thing we need is a 48,000 year old virus being reawakened. Maybe I've watched too many sci-fi flicks.
I guess they've proven one thing. These viruses CAN come back from the permafrost. Another problem from increased atmospheric CO2. And another thing to be efficiently ignored by the American public who don't want to be inconvenienced by changes in lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteYes, one of the many new things we will face with the droughts, floods, desalination of the oceans, displacement of large populations, increasingly severe storms, and the northward migration of bugs, snakes, and tropical diseases.
DeleteI understand very little about viruses. I found the following in the Encyclopedia Britannica:
ReplyDeleteViruses occupy a special taxonomic position: they are not plants, animals, or prokaryotic bacteria (single-cell organisms without defined nuclei), and they are generally placed in their own kingdom. In fact, viruses should not even be considered organisms, in the strictest sense, because they are not free-living—i.e., they cannot reproduce and carry on metabolic processes without a host cell.
Viruses are quintessential parasites; they depend on the host cell for almost all of their life-sustaining functions. Unlike true organisms, viruses cannot synthesize proteins, because they lack ribosomes (cell organelles) for the translation of viral messenger RNA (mRNA; a complementary copy of the nucleic acid of the nucleus that associates with ribosomes and directs protein synthesis) into proteins. Viruses must use the ribosomes of their host cells to translate viral mRNA into viral proteins.
Viruses are also energy parasites; unlike cells, they cannot generate or store energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The virus derives energy, as well as all other metabolic functions, from the host cell. The invading virus uses the nucleotides and amino acids of the host cell to synthesize its nucleic acids and proteins, respectively. Some viruses use the lipids and sugar chains of the host cell to form their membranes and glycoproteins (proteins linked to short polymers consisting of several sugars).
The true infectious part of any virus is its nucleic acid, either DNA or RNA but never both. In many viruses, but not all, the nucleic acid alone, stripped of its capsid, can infect (transfect) cells, although considerably less efficiently than can the intact virions.
Does anyone know some very elementary, probably very visual, presentations of all the basic ideas either in book or video form?
The origin of viruses is a fascinating topic which may never be definitively solved. One theory posits that viruses originated from cellular DNA or RNA that became freed of its original cellular system. Another theory claims that a parasitic cellular organism simplified until it no longer needed its own processes. Another claims that viruses are a stage in evolution predating cellular life.
DeleteI think that to prove any of this would require Star Trek type technology to visit many exoplanets and catch life in the process of emerging or in an early stage of emergence.
Viruses attack us sometimes but they also limit bacterial and single cell multiplication. The revived virus of the story attacks amoeba. They have also transferred genes between species and altered evolution, including our own.
At one point,after getting my physics degree, I considered virology as a career. Oh well. Would-a, should-a, could-a.
I had also read that viruses might be a stage in evolution predating cellular life. The trouble with that theory is that they can't replicate outside of a cell.
DeleteSomething related which may have aided in the evolutionary process are plasmids, which are double stranded, extra-chromosomal DNA, usually circular in configuration. They can be present in bacteria and can be transferred from one bacterium to another. Plasmids are how bacteria acquire antibiotic resistance. For an interesting look at plasmids: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmid
Viruses are not always harmful. Benign viruses were used as vectors in some of the Covid vaccines such as the Astra Zeneca and the Johnson and Johnson ones.
This is a good little ten minute tutorial on virus basics: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wUgEhfo_qxU
DeleteThanks, Katherine and Stanley. That was interesting.
DeleteI got interested in fungi since watching "The Last of Us," a medical dystopian, the premise of which is that there are no cures for the fungal infections driving them nuts.
I doubt that cordyceps would create zombies, though a pandemic of a disease that makes people crazy before killing them is especially frightening.
At any rate, the TV show has put me off the Hungarian mushroom soup.
I've heard stories passed down from my polish ancestors about people cooking the wrong (or maybe right) mushrooms and having conversations with the trees for a while. Apparently, my grandfather and a friend went mushroom hunting once. According to the story, the friend cooked up the mushrooms first, ate it and died. I guess my dziadek got the news in time.
DeleteI don't mess around with any wild mushrooms, I get mine from the store. I guess morrels are pretty hard to mix up with anything else. I always heard how delicious they were, and some people from church gave us some. But they weren't any better than regular 'shrooms, and kind of made my mouth feel funny. I'm sure one could consult a field guide to go mushroom hunting, but I just don't trust my discernment enough.
DeleteLots of people will be gearing up for morel hunting in April here in Michigan. Not me.
DeleteA lot of the places for hunting morels are also really good for getting poison ivy.
DeleteI never got the poison ivy, but Raber, a city boy, wore his flip flops into the woods on Beaver Island and got into it bad. I warned him to wear socks to gather kindling. There was a nasty mishap with some bees and a whittling accident. Weirdly, we remember that trip as the nicest two weeks of our lives. But I made sure we avoided camping in the middle of nowhere after that.
DeleteMy half French, half Polish daughter in law gathers and cooks wild mushrooms, especially when they spend the month of July in Poland. I guess she knows what she is doing. No problems so far. Poison ivy is rampant where we live. Everywhere that isn’t cultivated. Our house backs to a wooded area so my husband looks for it creeping into our yard and behind the house in the woods where the kids play. He’s highly allergic to it and when he was in the military reserves in the late 59’s- early 60s, crawling through underbrush at summer training camp, he ended up in the infirmary for a week with poison by welts all over his body. He had to take oral meds as well as topical. As careful as he is, he still gets it sometimes just walking by a plant he doesn’t spot. Fortunately, his reserve service as done by the time Viêt Nam heated up.
DeleteLOL, my title for this post, "Fool around and find out" could apply to the Silicon Valley Bank debacle. Maybe someone who knows more about the world of finance than I do will write about that.
ReplyDelete