Scientists Brought a 30,000-Year-Old Virus Back to Life — On Purpose

Vice

There’s even more bad news out of Russia: A never-before-seen virus that lay dormant for 30,000 years under 100 feet of Siberian permafrost has come back to life. And it’s infectious.

The pathogen, named Pithovirus sibericum, is unusually large for a virus — it has 500 genes as opposed to the more typical 8, and unlike the vast majority of viruses, it’s big enough to be seen through a conventional microscope. After multiplying in a petri dish in front of the French scientists who discovered and thawed it, the pathogen quickly infected a host.

Luckily, as the scientists wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that host was an amoeba; the virus isn’t dangerous to humans.

That said, the virus brings up the very real possibility of other, genuinely dangerous pathogens being resurrected and causing a pandemic. Only that wouldn't be because of curious French scientists — it would be due to global warming.

“The revival of such an ancestral amoeba infecting virus … suggests that the thawing of permafrost either from global warming or industrial exploitation of circumpolar regions might not be exempt from future threats to human or animal health,” the scientists wrote.

Somewhat troublingly, infectious disease researchers dig up old viruses fairly regularly, but this is the first time scientists have seen a virus that is still infectious after so much time.

“Any old virus can pop up again,” Dr. Paul A. Luciw, a virologist at UC Davis Center for Comparative Medicine, told VICE News. “And if it were harmful in the past, it would be harmful again.”

As temperatures keep getting warmer, more permafrost will thaw, which theoretically means more ancient viruses will continue to be exposed. And as France’s National Center for Scientific Research pointed out in a statement, even supposedly eradicated viruses like smallpox could be revived.

“Theoretically, it is possible that a hiker walking around in Siberia could fall in a hole,” Luciw said, “and become infected with an old disease that would affect humans.”