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30,000-year-old giant virus 'comes back to life'
- hit8run 11y agoOkay this could be a new hollywood introduction to an end of the world scenario. Hopefully we will make it to the end of our days without a zombie outbreak or another end of the world scenario :D
- harryf 11y agoWasn't this the plot of Prometheus more or less?
- themartorana 11y agoWell this is a potential side-effect of global climate change/warming that I had never considered... And I don't know this for sure, but off the cuff, I'm betting neither have 7,999,999,000 or so of the 8 billion people on the planet. And I'm not talking about the Godzilla-esque viruses, but the possibly dormant but not dead strains of smallpox, etc. Great illustration though - we may not have eradicated any viruses on the planet - just on the surface. (Paraphrase the article.)
- rnovak 11y agoI always wonder where people get these numbers. From what I understand, census bureaus, etc, still only say there are 7.3 billion people on Earth. Where are you getting the other 700,000,000?
- tizzdogg 11y agoPerhaps exact figures were not the point of the comment.
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- Fomite 11y agoPublic health folks think about this a lot. More pressing is things like expanding ranges for major vectors like diseases.
- lucideer 11y agoThis reminds me of a very recent TV series
- IvyMike 11y agoSort of an aside, but Radiolab recently had an episode about the relatively new class of giant "as big as bacteria" viruses. This appears to be one of those. I found the episode fascinating. http://www.radiolab.org/story/shrink/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/shrink/
- Amorymeltzer 11y agoThe scientist they interview, Jean-Michel Claverie, has done a lot of work in the large DNA-virus world, along with Didier Raoult. One of his best papers IMO (http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/gb-2006-7-6-110 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/gb-2006-7-6-110) goes into some theories about viruses. Basically, these nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs) look quite a lot like a nucelus in their infected amoeba targets. On some level, going back, who's to say that the nucleus wasn't just some big, DNA virus that stuck around? The parallel to the mitochondria/chloroplast theory is kind of neat to boot. Definitely worth a read.
- thejaredhooper 11y agoIs there any reason to be worried about the ice caps harboring viruses that could potentially wipe us out?
- ctdonath 11y agoWell, since they're practically wiped out and we're not, I'm not too worried.
- Amorymeltzer 11y agoMight be worth noting that story is from March 2014.
- dstyrb 11y ago"The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame."
- mgalka 11y agoGood post. Though it doesn't really make the distinction that these giant viruses are actually very different from normal viruses. They may have actually "reverse-evolved" from bacteria, and may not even be related to regular viruses. For anyone who listens to podcasts, there is a great Radiolab about their discovery.
- andrewstuart 11y agoI love it when scientists assure us of our safety.
- personjerry 11y agoThat's not really their job. There might be scientific facts that threaten us and scientific facts that reassure us. To reveal these facts is the job of the scientist.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoThese scientists? http://www.nature.com/news/us-military-accidentally-ships-live-anthrax-to-labs-1.17653 http://www.nature.com/news/us-military-accidentally-ships-li...
- personjerry 11y agoI think it's amazing because, well, what technology do we have that could "come back to life" in 30,000 years frozen? Nature showing how diverse and robust some of its work is.
- xellisx 11y ago"It comes into the cell, multiplies and finally kills the cell. It is able to kill the amoeba - but it won't infect a human cell." Haven't there been brain eating amoeba's? http://www.webmd.com/brain/brain-eating-amoeba http://www.webmd.com/brain/brain-eating-amoeba