14 DAY TRIAL // Investigators from the Aix-Marseille University in France, led by the husband-and-wife team of evolutionary biologists Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel, were recently successful in reviving a giant virus that has been trapped in Siberian ice for more than 30,000 years. To stick to all low-budget science-fiction scenarios ever made, the viral agent is still infectious after all this time.
Granted, this poses no dangers to humans, since the virus appears intent on attacking amoebae. Even so, the implications of this discovery are staggering – global warming could lead to the release of multiple ancient viruses upon a world that no longer has any immune system defenses against these long-gone threats.
Usually, viruses and immune defenses co-evolve. If this does not happen, the species unable to adapt to the attacks are destroyed, and evolution continues in animals capable of handling this extra pressure. However, when a virus has been extinct for millennia, immune systems across species can forget the recipe to create the necessary antibodies.
What really puzzled the French science duo was that the virus – now called Pithovirus sibericum – measures a whopping 1.5 micrometers in length. Details of the microorganism were published in a paper in the latest issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Once again, this group has opened our eyes to the enormous diversity that exists in giant viruses,” comments University of British Columbia virologist Curtis Suttle, who was not a part of the study. He is referring to several other giant virus discoveries the team made, in 2002 and 2013.
Claverie, Abergel, and their team decided to try and revive the ancient virus after reading about the exploits of a group of Russian scientists, who in 2012 managed to resurrect a plant that had been trapped in Siberian permafrost for 30,000 years, Nature News reports. “If it was possible to revive a plant, I wondered if it was possible to revive a virus,” Claverie says.
In order to make the viral agent come out and play, researchers took permafrost samples from the Russian team, and then used amoebae as bait for any potential giant viruses that might have still occupied this frozen soil. When the amoebae started dying, the team cut them open and recovered the giant Pithovirus sibericum particles from within.
“That huge particle is basically empty. We thought it was a property of viruses that they pack DNA extremely tightly into the smallest particle possible, but this guy is 150 times less compacted than any bacteriophage [viruses that infect bacteria]. We don’t understand anything anymore!” Claverie adds.