Scientists have discovered over 1,700 ancient viruses hidden deep within a glacier in Western China, most of which had never been identified before. This raises concerns that as the world warms and ice melts, it could release pathogens unknown to science, potentially leading to deadly pandemics.
In 2015, an international team of researchers found numerous viruses in a 304-meter ice core extracted from the Guliya Glacier on the Tibetan Plateau, located at the crossroads of Central Asia, South Asia, and East Asia. These viruses date back 41,000 years and have survived through three major climate shifts from cold to warm.
Ice core extracted by scientists from the Tibetan Plateau (China). (Photo: ABC News).
This discovery was published in the journal Nature Geoscience on August 26. The ice cores are preserved at a site with a temperature of -31 degrees Celsius at a research institute in Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson at Ohio State University stated: “The three ice cores in our collection were taken from glaciers that no longer exist. Mountain glaciers are disappearing rapidly as global temperatures continue to rise.”
Just a day after the study was published, American singer and actor Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges posted a video of himself drinking melted glacier water from Alaska. The video garnered millions of views on TikTok and Instagram, raising concerns that Ludacris was risking his life by consuming untreated glacier water.
However, a glaciologist remarked that Ludacris was perfectly fine and that the water from the melting glacier “is the cleanest water”. Nonetheless, public concerns are not entirely unfounded.
Scientists have previously documented deadly pathogens emerging from melting permafrost in various locations around the world, raising fears of potential outbreaks. For example, in 2016, anthrax spores were released from the frozen remains of animals in permafrost in Siberia, leading to dozens of hospitalizations and one child’s death.
Fortunately, all 1,700 viruses found in the ice core from the Tibetan Plateau pose no threat to human health. They can only infect archaea, which are single-celled organisms, and bacteria. They cannot make humans, animals, or even plants sick. However, studying them is crucial as they provide valuable data about Earth’s climate history and may help us understand what bacteria might look like in the future.
The ice core is divided into nine segments, each representing different time periods and climate phases. The segments range in age from 160 to 41,000 years. Researchers extracted DNA from each segment and used a process called metagenomic analysis, which studies the structure and function of the complete nucleic acid sequences from organisms, to identify each viral strain. From their analysis, researchers discovered that the viral communities were highly diverse, depending on the climatic conditions at the time they were frozen.
