Ancient Viruses Frozen In Arctic Permafrost Could Be Released Due To Warm Climate, Threatens To Be A New Pandemic

Ancient zombie viruses buried in melting Arctic permafrost might spark a new pandemic if unleashed by climate change, scientists warn.

Methuselah Bacteria

Melting sea ice offers up maritime and economic options, including mining deep into the permafrost that covers a fifth of the northern hemisphere, primarily in Canada, Siberia, and Alaska, as a result of global warming.

However, scientists are apparently planning an Arctic monitoring network to detect any early occurrences of an illness caused by ancient viruses, often known as Methuselah microorganisms.

Researchers have already detected strains of these Methuselah bacteria, known as zombie viruses, raising concerns that a new global medical emergency could be caused-not by a newly discovered ailment but by aa disease from the distant past.

As a result, scientists have begun developing an Arctic monitoring network to detect early symptoms of an illness caused by ancient microorganisms.

Furthermore, it would provide quarantine and skilled medical treatment to affected people in order to limit an outbreak and prevent them from leaving the region.

"We don't know what viruses are lying out there in the permafrost but I think there is a real risk that there might be one capable of triggering a disease outbreak - say of an ancient form of polio. We have to assume that something like this could happen," said virologist Marion Koopmans of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam.

Geneticist Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University led a team of scientists in 2014 who discovered living viruses in Siberia and demonstrated their ability to infect single-cell organisms despite being frozen in permafrost for thousands of years.

Further research, published last year, confirmed the existence of multiple different virus strains from seven separate Siberian locales, all of which could infect cultured cells. One virus specimen was 48,500 years old.

Melting Of Arctic Sea Ice

Permafrost covers one-fifth of the northern hemisphere and is made up of soil that has been preserved at temperatures below zero for long periods. Scientists revealed that certain layers had been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years.

But the world's permafrost is shifting. The upper layers of the planet's largest reserves, located in Canada, Siberia, and Alaska, are melting as climate change has a disproportionate impact on the Arctic. Meteorologists say the region is warming at a rate many times faster than the global average.

However, thawing permafrost directly does not offer the most urgent harm.

The consequence of global warming is the melting of Arctic sea ice. This allows for increased shipping, traffic, and industrial development in Siberia. Huge mining operations are being planned, and they will drive vast tunnels into the deep permafrost to recover oil and minerals.

Scientists estimate that the deepest depths of permafrost may contain viruses that are up to a million years old, making them far older than our own species, which is thought to have evolved some 300,000 years ago.

"Our immune systems may have never been in contact with some of those microbes, and that is another worry. The scenario of an unknown virus once infecting a Neanderthal coming back at us, although unlikely, has become a real possibility," said Claverie.