I'm sure humanity is ready for whatever sci-fi novel this is about to unleash on us all.
Scientists who study glacier ice have found viruses nearly 15,000 years old in two ice samples taken from the Tibetan Plateau in China. Most of those viruses, which survived because they had remained frozen, are unlike any viruses that have been cataloged to date.
The findings, published today in the journal Microbiome, could help scientists understand how viruses have evolved over centuries. For this study, the scientists also created a new, ultra-clean method of analyzing microbes and viruses in ice without contaminating it.
How many new and novel viruses have scientists found?
Dozens.
When they analyzed the ice, they found genetic codes for 33 viruses. Four of those viruses have already been identified by the scientific community. But at least 28 of them are novel. About half of them seemed to have survived at the time they were frozen not in spite of the ice, but because of it.
Even better, it seems these viruses are specialized in surviving cold conditions so they can be super infectious during the winter.
"These are viruses that would have thrived in extreme environments," said Matthew Sullivan, co-author of the study, professor of microbiology at Ohio State and director of Ohio State's Center of Microbiome Science. "These viruses have signatures of genes that help them infect cells in cold environments – just surreal genetic signatures for how a virus is able to survive in extreme conditions.
Yay!
At least there's two points of good news:
- Since this is in Tibet, it's not technically in China (see what I did there?), and hopefully the wonderful communist party won't be able to get them across the continent to Wuhan to start doing gain-of-function research without anyone noticing.
- The viruses seem to be soil and plant based, meaning they likely did not originate or thrive in humans or animals.
Still, I bet President Xi is already salivating over the chance to throw out a few more novel viruses in his quest for world domination!
Meanwhile, the climate cult is celebrating what they believe could be the end of the human race:
