Several ancient viruses have been discovered in 15,000-year-old glacial ice. #ScienceAlert
In 2015, a team of scientists from the United States and China traveled to Tibet to gather samples of Earth's oldest glacial ice. Earlier this month, they published a paper on the pre-print server bioRxiv detailing their discovery of 28 new virus groups in the 15,000-year-old ice - and warning that climate change could free the ancient viruses into the modern world. The team drilled 50 meters (164 feet) down into the glacier to obtain two ice cores, which then underwent a three-step decontamination protocol. After that, the researchers used microbiology techniques to identify microbes in the samples. Those techniques revealed 33 virus groups - including, notably, 28 ancient viruses that scientists had never seen before. "This study establishes ultra-clean microbial and viral sampling procedures for glacier ice, which complements prior in silico decontamination methods and expands, for the first time, the clean procedures to viruses," the team wrote. As the team pointed out in their paper, climate change now threatens both our ability to exhaustively catalogue those tiny lifeforms - as well as our ability to stay safe from dangerous ones. |
Pig kidney transplanted into living person for first time (photo)
626221.03.2024, 20:48First person dies from Alaskapox virus
151212.02.2024, 18:06Record-breaking doctors' strike piles pressure on England's health service
288903.01.2024, 19:30China Hospitals overwhelmed with children suffering pneumonia
692223.11.2023, 10:18WHO Concerned by Report of Israeli Evacuation Warning to Gaza Al-Quds Hospital
367829.10.2023, 19:00Pakistan police bust organ trafficking ring that took kidneys from hundreds
338920.10.2023, 23:42