The scientific world rejoices: in the permafrost, after a "sleep" that lasted 30 thousand years, the Pithovirus sibericu virus was activated. It was in a deep layer of Siberian permafrost, but after it was thawed, it became dangerous again.
1 Siberian threat
The latent threat, sleeping in the ice, does not let you forget about yourself. In the Siberian permafrost, scientists have discovered a new virus that has been dormant there for thirty thousand years. The found non-cellular agent, after a long sleep, unexpectedly began to lead an active lifestyle - "hunt" for amoebas, pretending to be a bacteria that serve as food for the microorganism. Amoeba, which absorbed such a virus, became a kind of laboratory for its reproduction.
The new species was named Pithovirus sibericu, it belongs to giant viruses and is considered the largest of all known representatives of its category. It is not dangerous for humans and animals, but scientists were struck by something else: "This is the first time we see a virus that remains infectious after so many years," said Professor Jean-Marie Claverie from the French National Center for Scientific Research. This was another warning to humanity that the most terrible threat may await civilization in the ice.
2 Pandora's Secret
It must be said that the discovery of new viruses in ice occurs quite often. Just a year before the Siberian giant was discovered another of its "brother" from the family of giant viruses, which received the alarming name "Pandora", more precisely Pandoravirus salinus. "Finding giant viruses is like opening Pandora's box," said microbiologist Jean-Michel Claverie. "We can't even imagine what will happen to biology after we study them in more detail." Pandovarius, like Pithovirus, is not dangerous to humans. Some scientists, based on the presence of hitherto unknown genes in the virus, suggest that this may be an unknown branch of the tree of life.
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3 Plague of mammoths
In 2009, in Yakutia, an employee of the Pension Fund, walking along the banks of the Khroma River, accidentally discovered the well-preserved carcass of a mammoth, which, according to experts, had been lying in the permafrost for 32 thousand years. The age of the animal, which at the time of death was two years old, was a special uniqueness for scientists - a rare exhibit for world science. The find quickly became a sensation, it was taken all over the world, until in 2010 it was discovered that the cause of the early death of the calf was still alive, it turned out to be the anthrax virus, so well known to us in the 21st century. Of course, the modern version of the virus has become only vaguely similar to its "ancestor" as a result of a long mutation. However, bacteriologists say this fact does not guarantee the safety of ice age anthrax. By the way, the discovery of anthrax in a mammoth may finallyto shed light on the origin of mammoth fauna cemeteries, scientists believe. In addition, the detection of this particular non-cellular agent in the baby mammoth proved the ancient nature of the anthrax virus.
4 Mimi
Whether the viruses are alive, but you need to attribute them to inanimate nature - science is not yet known. Each new discovery in virology only adds insoluble questions. In Britain, an unknown object was discovered in an amoeba in 1992 while studying the sources of an outbreak of influenza. In diameter (800 nanometers), it was larger than known viruses, but it was not a bacterium. Biologists ranked it as a virus and dubbed it Mimi - because of the mimicry of a bacterium. The study of this virus and even the decoding of its genome did not lead to any convincing results. The 50 Mimi genes are responsible for things never seen before in viruses. In particular, Mimi is capable of independently synthesizing 150 types of proteins and even repairing its own damaged DNA, which is generally nonsense for viruses. Scientists have not yet come to a consensuswhat is the uniquely ancient Mimi virus. There are even suggestions that this is one of the links in evolution.
5 Hemadnovirus
In 2010, scientists from the University of Texas at Arlington discovered in the DNA of a zebra finch (such a bird) the genetic code of a virus at least 19 million years old. The researchers studied the bird's genome for parasitic insertions, it turned out that 15 fragments of the virus from the group of hepadnaviruses, distributed over 10 chromosomes, were scattered in it. Hepatnaviruses (a combination of the words "hepatitis" and "DNA") are a family of DNA viruses that embed their sequences into the genomes of the host organism. The discovery of scientists amazed. According to the results of the study, it was determined that the hepadnavirus infected the genome of the finch between 19 and 40 million years ago.
6 Smallpox virus
Viruses are incredibly tenacious "creatures". The smallpox virus was known in ancient times and “mowed down” entire nations. In India, there was even a smallpox goddess in the form of a young woman in red clothes - Mariatale. On dating back to 1160 BC. e. The mummies of Pharaoh Ramses V were found to have traces of smallpox, from which, apparently, he died. This indicates that the disease was known in Egypt over 3000 years ago. This disease seemed like fate, it was not for nothing that there was a saying in Germany “Love and smallpox will pass only a few”. They learned to fight smallpox only forty years ago, but it is too early to argue that smallpox is forever defeated. According to Professor Claverie, there is a risk that smallpox actually disappeared only from the surface of the earth, but still remains in the glaciers. This means that this disease can once again become a threat to humanity in the 21st century.
7 Phoenix
In 2006, a group of French researchers from the Gustave Rossi Institute, led by Thierry Heidman, revived an ancient virus, which was several hundred thousand years old, and placed it in a human tissue cell. Scientists were able to observe with their own eyes how the retrovirus enters the cell not only physically, but also by embedding itself in DNA. Scientists have also conducted experiments on organic cells from hamsters and cats. In all cases, the virus quickly adapted and infected the research object. It turned out that the ancestral virus is able to reproduce its genetic apparatus in human cells, producing new virions, and the restored virions can infect fresh cells by introducing their parasitic genes into them. This process can become cyclical:retroviruses reproduce new particles that leave infected cells and infect healthy cells over and over again. That is why the paleovirus was named Phoenix.