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Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up

240 points by jonbaer 6y ago

jonbaer 6y ago
Nearly everything you see on report(s) pertaining to the Arctic region never mention microbes @ all ... ie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEsPP8aJJ3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEsPP8aJJ3c
axiomdata316 6y ago
This feels like it would have potential for a Sci Fi thriller.
COGlory 6y ago
This article was clearly written primarily by the climatologists and not the microbiologist who is mentioned in the author list. Or perhaps, they are being knowingly irresponsible to further an agenda. The climate threat is sufficient on its own. We don't need to dilute it's seriousness by inventing threats such as ancient arctic viruses and microbes. I'm not advocating that we don't study these phenomenon, or that some complex phenomena don't have the potential to be globe altering, but this article is just fearmongering. There is no arctic virus or microbe that is going to terrorize the world. There is no gene that will suddenly be distributed and wreak havoc on mammalian populations, like the article is clearly insinuating. >Permafrost thaw in Siberia led to a 2018 anthrax outbreak and the death of 200,000 reindeer and a child. Anthrax is not going to sporulate around the globe from the Arctic. Bacillus anthracis already live everywhere in the globe and only sporulate when they are stressed. The reason the ones in the permafrost were dangerous is because they were stressed from the cold. However, the flip side is no one lives there, making it a complete isolated incident. Additionally, the reindeer were culled, not directly killed by the anthrax toxin. >Organisms that co-evolved within now-extinct ecosystems from the Cenozoic to the Pleistocene may also emerge and interact with our modern environment in entirely novel ways. A potential example, the emerging Orthopoxvirus species Alaskapox causing skin lesions, has appeared and disappeared in Alaska twice in the last five years. "Alaskapox" is an orthopoxvirus. These are not novel. They are perhaps the most widespread mammalian virus. They evolve rapidly and species jump from time to time. 33% of known orthoxpoxviridae were discovered in the last detect The reported human cases are thought to be from squirrel contact, and not humam-to-human transmissible. To date, there is zero evidence that "alaskapox" is from arctic/frozen origin. Exactly no evidence, despite overwhelming evidence that orthopoxviruses do evolve to new hosts and jump species. Additionally, there are dozens of emergent viruses around the world that are nowhere near the Arctic. An emergency virus near the Arctic is about as correlated to global warming as a baseball bat is correlated to deep sea diving. >it is challenging to assess risks accurately without improved Arctic microbial datasets. We should pay attention to both known unknowns, such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria,and unknown unknowns, including the potential risks from the resurrection of ancient and poorly described viral genomes from Arctic ice by synthetic biologists. This is just totally irresponsible fearmongering for a few reasons: 1) Humans did not and still don't live in these regions in any quantity. Which means no intact, infectious virion that targets humans is going to be found there, and even if it somehow was, it's not going to escape there. This is not Wuhan, this is the Arctic. Again, novel viruses emerge frequently, and are inherently limited, frequently, by their environments. Marburg, Ebola, Hantavirus, MERS, are all substantially greater threats than anything found in the Arctic because they have coevolved with their hosts for millions more years. These old, otherwise extinct arctic virus we haven't seen in eons (if ever)? They died out because they couldn't keep up with their hosts, or because their hosts disappeared and there was nothing left they were capable of infecting. Either scenario results in: not a direct threat. 2) Genome transfer. What if somehow SARS-CoV 2 picks up some gene that somehow wipes us out? This is extremely unlikely to be bad. Most genes are absolutely ancient already. Those that didn't make it, didn't make it for a reason. All of the genes a virus needs are already out there in the virome, and they recombine all the time. That's why next year's flu is an infinitely greater threat than anything buried in arctic ice. Also, if the genes were that much of an advantage, they wouldn't have extincted in the first place, OR they will be entirely incompatible with modern hosts. 3) There's a limit to viral lethality. If the virus kills quickly, it won't spread. This is why super lethal viruses tend to be endemic to areas, and their reservoir is usually hosts like bats where the virus is non-lethal. Super lethal viruses don't spread well, and it's why something like CoV or the flu are much scarier and kill many more people than ebola.
cute_boi 6y ago
Hmm I think I read a similar article like 6 months ago and it's quite sad to read :(. And the more irritating issue is I know many people who deny climate change / global warming by saying earth has always faced climate change.
Method-X 6y ago
Would be a fitting end to 2020; super COVID released from ancient arctic ice.
- randycupertino 6y ago
  Perhaps we'll do better for the "next" pandemic now that we have the infrastructure in place and learned some lessons from COVID? Maybe I'm grasping for silver linings and being too optimistic towards humanity...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ggambetta 6y ago
    One of the lessons that I've learned from this pandemic is that despite overwhelming evidence and over a million deaths, there's a non-trivial amount of people who still believe it's not real, or who refuse to wear a mask, or who protest against the few, mild, reasonable measures we can take to get through this alive. So if anything, my faith in humankind has gone down :(
    - franklampard 6y ago
      only in the U.S.
      - quickthrowman 6y ago
        Incorrect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_over_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_over_responses_to_t...
      - bearburger 6y ago
        Unfortunately I see these peoples around in Russia. My estimation of anti-maskers is about 10-15% of population here. Mostly 35-55 males who thinks that wearing a mask is the sign of weakness and/or keeps saying that COVID is "just a flu" and those who died would have been dead anyway in 2-3 month if not from COVID then from something like common cold. Even recent death of 28 y/o school teacher and 23 y/o political activist didn't change their mind.
echelon 6y ago
> Permafrost thaw in Siberia led to a 2018 anthrax outbreak and the death of 200,000 reindeer and a child. This is terrifying and not hypothetical.
- lixtra 6y ago
  To be precise, the 200,000 reindeer were culled [1]. [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10393-020-01474-z?shared-article-renderer https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10393-020-01474-z...
  - animal_spirits 6y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. For the unfamiliar (like me a few seconds ago) culling means "to reduce or control the size of (something, such as a herd) by removal (as by hunting or slaughter) of especially weak or sick individuals " [1] [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cull https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cull
    - casefields 6y ago
      Which is why New York is doing so well with COVID now. New York’s true nursing home death toll cloaked in secrecy: https://apnews.com/article/212ccd87924b6906053703a00514647f https://apnews.com/article/212ccd87924b6906053703a00514647f
  - nojs 6y ago
    Full paper: https://sci-hub.se/downloads/2020-02-04/2c/10.1007@s10393-020-01474-z.pdf https://sci-hub.se/downloads/2020-02-04/2c/10.1007@s10393-02... This presents some alternate hypotheses for the outbreak and claims Anthrax is fairly unique in its ability to survive repeated freeze-thaw cycles.
- CraigJPerry 6y ago
  >> This is terrifying Why? It’s definitely concerning but is it in the same league as say the fact America appears to have lost desire to retain its leadership in the world? Are we ready for another country to decide to take a shot at that role? That sounds like a terrifying prospect to me because i just can’t see that happening without bloodshed. In years gone past, whatever the crisis, America would step up and lead. Over the past few years it’s chosen, as is its right to do so, to step back from world leadership (trade, peace keeping, covid response, immigration, climate change, etc etc) What about a super volcano eruption tomorrow, we know one is coming but we don’t know when yet we do very little to prepare for it, e.g. post massive disaster food crop growing research etc. What about the fact that electrical grids are creaking at the seams today in many countries and that we know it only takes around 2 weeks of no electrical grid to reach catastrophic changes to way of life (hospitals offline, perishable food supplies mostly gone, commerce halted etc etc) The really terrifying things don’t get much in the way of discourse. How can this possibly be in the same league as the terrifying stuff we’re a bit scared to talk about because there aren’t really any great answers and there’s no way to predict when so we have an easy way to ignore it all.
based2 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pithovirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pithovirus https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/079940-000-A/permafrost-la-bombe-climatique/ https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/079940-000-A/permafrost-la-bom...
somurzakov 6y ago
wait until permafrost thawes and releases gigatonnes of methane into the air that woukd turn our planet into a large greenhouse. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions : The Permian–Triassic extinction event (the Great Dying) may have been caused by release of methane from clathrates. An estimated 52% of marine genus became extinct, representing 96% of all marine species.
- Kinrany 6y ago
  Could we just replace the ice with concrete (before it thaws)?
  - w0de02 6y ago
    And that, schoolchildren, is why Siberia is the world’s largest roller rink.
- randycupertino 6y ago
  Is there an estimated timeframe on approximately when this will happen?
  - irrational 6y ago
    Isn’t it already happening? Is that what is creating the huge methane explosions and craters in Siberia?
    - samiru 6y ago
      Yes. Check the Yamal Peninsula in Google Maps and you realize this kind of cratering is a process that has been going on for thousands of years (since the ice age really!).
      - knowaveragejoe 6y ago
        The scary part is that it's accelerating in on a timescale that's relevant to our needs as a species.
f_o_m 6y ago
The sci-fi novel "Mind Painter" explores this in depth - good, scary stuff!
- shishy 6y ago
  Hi, Where can I find this book? Is it this one (coming out next month)? https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/mind-painter-tom-b-night/updates https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/mind-painter-tom-b-night/u... Thanks.
  - f_o_m 6y ago
    It recently came out and is on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Painter-Tom-B-Night/dp/B08NDVJ3C8/ https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Painter-Tom-B-Night/dp/B08NDVJ3C...
nosmokewhereiam 6y ago
"Mycoremediation is the bioremediation technique which employ fungi in the removal of toxic compounds; it could be carried out in the presence of both filamentous fungi (moulds) and macrofungi (mushrooms). Both classes possess enzymes for the degradation of a large variety of pollutants" Maybe Paul Stammets, Michael Pollan, and the entire next generation of mycology experts can find a way to sporolate these areas in an effective way. Even if it just encapsulates and doesn't eliminate, it's still something.
- kleer001 6y ago
  Might be time for some Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind style remediation
zygotic 6y ago
Fighting, what some call, Mother Nature is essentially futile. Surely this is a lesson takeaway from Global Warming et al.
feralimal 6y ago
"Rockabye baby, on the tree top..." Don't worry about me, just getting those microbes back to bed...
mikedilger 6y ago
Life that has been continually evolving as the environment changes is much more likely to develop into a super threat than life that has been frozen for ages and is waking up into a world that it is not optimized for. Anthrax outbreaks have occurred all around the world. Just because it occurred in Siberia and there is evidence that it survives being frozen for long periods of time doesn't mean the risk of some super threat from permafrost is of any exceptional significance. It seems however that people like to be frightened and to have something to panic about, especially Americans, and your newspapers and magazines cater to this by cherry picking data that can be twisted to tell a scary story.
- nix23 6y ago
  Yeah they like the Smilla's Sense of Snow shiver :) scientificamerican and history channel....
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
andai 6y ago
Amazing that microbes can just defrost and carry on with their life. Why can't animals do that?
- nicbou 6y ago
  Doesn't the water in our bodies tear through everything when it turns to ice?
- jamiek88 6y ago
  Complexity mostly. It’s a lot easier to protect a single cell than it is trillions working in concert.

240 points by jonbaer 6y ago

Nearly everything you see on report(s) pertaining to the Arctic region never mention microbes @ all ... ie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEsPP8aJJ3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEsPP8aJJ3c

axiomdata316 6y ago

This feels like it would have potential for a Sci Fi thriller.

COGlory 6y ago

This article was clearly written primarily by the climatologists and not the microbiologist who is mentioned in the author list. Or perhaps, they are being knowingly irresponsible to further an agenda. The climate threat is sufficient on its own. We don't need to dilute it's seriousness by inventing threats such as ancient arctic viruses and microbes. I'm not advocating that we don't study these phenomenon, or that some complex phenomena don't have the potential to be globe altering, but this article is just fearmongering. There is no arctic virus or microbe that is going to terrorize the world. There is no gene that will suddenly be distributed and wreak havoc on mammalian populations, like the article is clearly insinuating. >Permafrost thaw in Siberia led to a 2018 anthrax outbreak and the death of 200,000 reindeer and a child. Anthrax is not going to sporulate around the globe from the Arctic. Bacillus anthracis already live everywhere in the globe and only sporulate when they are stressed. The reason the ones in the permafrost were dangerous is because they were stressed from the cold. However, the flip side is no one lives there, making it a complete isolated incident. Additionally, the reindeer were culled, not directly killed by the anthrax toxin. >Organisms that co-evolved within now-extinct ecosystems from the Cenozoic to the Pleistocene may also emerge and interact with our modern environment in entirely novel ways. A potential example, the emerging Orthopoxvirus species Alaskapox causing skin lesions, has appeared and disappeared in Alaska twice in the last five years. "Alaskapox" is an orthopoxvirus. These are not novel. They are perhaps the most widespread mammalian virus. They evolve rapidly and species jump from time to time. 33% of known orthoxpoxviridae were discovered in the last detect The reported human cases are thought to be from squirrel contact, and not humam-to-human transmissible. To date, there is zero evidence that "alaskapox" is from arctic/frozen origin. Exactly no evidence, despite overwhelming evidence that orthopoxviruses do evolve to new hosts and jump species. Additionally, there are dozens of emergent viruses around the world that are nowhere near the Arctic. An emergency virus near the Arctic is about as correlated to global warming as a baseball bat is correlated to deep sea diving. >it is challenging to assess risks accurately without improved Arctic microbial datasets. We should pay attention to both known unknowns, such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria,and unknown unknowns, including the potential risks from the resurrection of ancient and poorly described viral genomes from Arctic ice by synthetic biologists. This is just totally irresponsible fearmongering for a few reasons: 1) Humans did not and still don't live in these regions in any quantity. Which means no intact, infectious virion that targets humans is going to be found there, and even if it somehow was, it's not going to escape there. This is not Wuhan, this is the Arctic. Again, novel viruses emerge frequently, and are inherently limited, frequently, by their environments. Marburg, Ebola, Hantavirus, MERS, are all substantially greater threats than anything found in the Arctic because they have coevolved with their hosts for millions more years. These old, otherwise extinct arctic virus we haven't seen in eons (if ever)? They died out because they couldn't keep up with their hosts, or because their hosts disappeared and there was nothing left they were capable of infecting. Either scenario results in: not a direct threat. 2) Genome transfer. What if somehow SARS-CoV 2 picks up some gene that somehow wipes us out? This is extremely unlikely to be bad. Most genes are absolutely ancient already. Those that didn't make it, didn't make it for a reason. All of the genes a virus needs are already out there in the virome, and they recombine all the time. That's why next year's flu is an infinitely greater threat than anything buried in arctic ice. Also, if the genes were that much of an advantage, they wouldn't have extincted in the first place, OR they will be entirely incompatible with modern hosts. 3) There's a limit to viral lethality. If the virus kills quickly, it won't spread. This is why super lethal viruses tend to be endemic to areas, and their reservoir is usually hosts like bats where the virus is non-lethal. Super lethal viruses don't spread well, and it's why something like CoV or the flu are much scarier and kill many more people than ebola.

cute_boi 6y ago

Hmm I think I read a similar article like 6 months ago and it's quite sad to read :(. And the more irritating issue is I know many people who deny climate change / global warming by saying earth has always faced climate change.

Method-X 6y ago

Would be a fitting end to 2020; super COVID released from ancient arctic ice.

randycupertino 6y ago
Perhaps we'll do better for the "next" pandemic now that we have the infrastructure in place and learned some lessons from COVID? Maybe I'm grasping for silver linings and being too optimistic towards humanity...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ggambetta 6y ago
  One of the lessons that I've learned from this pandemic is that despite overwhelming evidence and over a million deaths, there's a non-trivial amount of people who still believe it's not real, or who refuse to wear a mask, or who protest against the few, mild, reasonable measures we can take to get through this alive. So if anything, my faith in humankind has gone down :(
  - franklampard 6y ago
    only in the U.S.
    - quickthrowman 6y ago
      Incorrect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_over_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_over_responses_to_t...
    - bearburger 6y ago
      Unfortunately I see these peoples around in Russia. My estimation of anti-maskers is about 10-15% of population here. Mostly 35-55 males who thinks that wearing a mask is the sign of weakness and/or keeps saying that COVID is "just a flu" and those who died would have been dead anyway in 2-3 month if not from COVID then from something like common cold. Even recent death of 28 y/o school teacher and 23 y/o political activist didn't change their mind.

echelon 6y ago

> Permafrost thaw in Siberia led to a 2018 anthrax outbreak and the death of 200,000 reindeer and a child. This is terrifying and not hypothetical.

lixtra 6y ago
To be precise, the 200,000 reindeer were culled [1]. [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10393-020-01474-z?shared-article-renderer https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10393-020-01474-z...
- animal_spirits 6y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. For the unfamiliar (like me a few seconds ago) culling means "to reduce or control the size of (something, such as a herd) by removal (as by hunting or slaughter) of especially weak or sick individuals " [1] [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cull https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cull
  - casefields 6y ago
    Which is why New York is doing so well with COVID now. New York’s true nursing home death toll cloaked in secrecy: https://apnews.com/article/212ccd87924b6906053703a00514647f https://apnews.com/article/212ccd87924b6906053703a00514647f
- nojs 6y ago
  Full paper: https://sci-hub.se/downloads/2020-02-04/2c/10.1007@s10393-020-01474-z.pdf https://sci-hub.se/downloads/2020-02-04/2c/10.1007@s10393-02... This presents some alternate hypotheses for the outbreak and claims Anthrax is fairly unique in its ability to survive repeated freeze-thaw cycles.
CraigJPerry 6y ago
>> This is terrifying Why? It’s definitely concerning but is it in the same league as say the fact America appears to have lost desire to retain its leadership in the world? Are we ready for another country to decide to take a shot at that role? That sounds like a terrifying prospect to me because i just can’t see that happening without bloodshed. In years gone past, whatever the crisis, America would step up and lead. Over the past few years it’s chosen, as is its right to do so, to step back from world leadership (trade, peace keeping, covid response, immigration, climate change, etc etc) What about a super volcano eruption tomorrow, we know one is coming but we don’t know when yet we do very little to prepare for it, e.g. post massive disaster food crop growing research etc. What about the fact that electrical grids are creaking at the seams today in many countries and that we know it only takes around 2 weeks of no electrical grid to reach catastrophic changes to way of life (hospitals offline, perishable food supplies mostly gone, commerce halted etc etc) The really terrifying things don’t get much in the way of discourse. How can this possibly be in the same league as the terrifying stuff we’re a bit scared to talk about because there aren’t really any great answers and there’s no way to predict when so we have an easy way to ignore it all.

based2 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pithovirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pithovirus https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/079940-000-A/permafrost-la-bombe-climatique/ https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/079940-000-A/permafrost-la-bom...

somurzakov 6y ago

wait until permafrost thawes and releases gigatonnes of methane into the air that woukd turn our planet into a large greenhouse. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions : The Permian–Triassic extinction event (the Great Dying) may have been caused by release of methane from clathrates. An estimated 52% of marine genus became extinct, representing 96% of all marine species.

Kinrany 6y ago
Could we just replace the ice with concrete (before it thaws)?
- w0de02 6y ago
  And that, schoolchildren, is why Siberia is the world’s largest roller rink.
randycupertino 6y ago
Is there an estimated timeframe on approximately when this will happen?
- irrational 6y ago
  Isn’t it already happening? Is that what is creating the huge methane explosions and craters in Siberia?
  - samiru 6y ago
    Yes. Check the Yamal Peninsula in Google Maps and you realize this kind of cratering is a process that has been going on for thousands of years (since the ice age really!).
    - knowaveragejoe 6y ago
      The scary part is that it's accelerating in on a timescale that's relevant to our needs as a species.

f_o_m 6y ago

The sci-fi novel "Mind Painter" explores this in depth - good, scary stuff!

shishy 6y ago
Hi, Where can I find this book? Is it this one (coming out next month)? https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/mind-painter-tom-b-night/updates https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/mind-painter-tom-b-night/u... Thanks.
- f_o_m 6y ago
  It recently came out and is on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Painter-Tom-B-Night/dp/B08NDVJ3C8/ https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Painter-Tom-B-Night/dp/B08NDVJ3C...

nosmokewhereiam 6y ago

"Mycoremediation is the bioremediation technique which employ fungi in the removal of toxic compounds; it could be carried out in the presence of both filamentous fungi (moulds) and macrofungi (mushrooms). Both classes possess enzymes for the degradation of a large variety of pollutants" Maybe Paul Stammets, Michael Pollan, and the entire next generation of mycology experts can find a way to sporolate these areas in an effective way. Even if it just encapsulates and doesn't eliminate, it's still something.

kleer001 6y ago
Might be time for some Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind style remediation

zygotic 6y ago

Fighting, what some call, Mother Nature is essentially futile. Surely this is a lesson takeaway from Global Warming et al.

feralimal 6y ago

"Rockabye baby, on the tree top..." Don't worry about me, just getting those microbes back to bed...

mikedilger 6y ago

Life that has been continually evolving as the environment changes is much more likely to develop into a super threat than life that has been frozen for ages and is waking up into a world that it is not optimized for. Anthrax outbreaks have occurred all around the world. Just because it occurred in Siberia and there is evidence that it survives being frozen for long periods of time doesn't mean the risk of some super threat from permafrost is of any exceptional significance. It seems however that people like to be frightened and to have something to panic about, especially Americans, and your newspapers and magazines cater to this by cherry picking data that can be twisted to tell a scary story.

nix23 6y ago
Yeah they like the Smilla's Sense of Snow shiver :) scientificamerican and history channel....

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

andai 6y ago

Amazing that microbes can just defrost and carry on with their life. Why can't animals do that?

nicbou 6y ago
Doesn't the water in our bodies tear through everything when it turns to ice?
jamiek88 6y ago
Complexity mostly. It’s a lot easier to protect a single cell than it is trillions working in concert.