Ancient Pathogen Stored in Melting Permafrost Could Leak, Start New Pandemic [Study]

The world is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a new report raised concerns that time-traveling viruses trapped in melting permafrost for thousands of years might start another outbreak.

Ancient Pathogens Trapped in Permafrost Could Start New Pandemic

Ancient pathogens trapped in permafrost for centuries might have survived and evolved to become the dominant species of free-living organisms, killing up to one-third of their hosts that resembled bacteria, Daily Mail reported.

The startling discovery was established by experts at the Joint Research Center of the European Commission, who discovered that roughly three percent of virus-like organisms became dominant after being released from the ice using computer simulations.

According to new research, time-traveling diseases, which have only hitherto appeared in science fiction, may be significant drivers of ecological change and health hazards.

A 48,500-year-old virus discovered in melting Siberian permafrost was revived by scientists in 2022. It was one of seven different virus kinds that survived thousands of years in the permafrost.

The oldest, Pandoravirus yedoma, had been frozen for 48,500 years, while the youngest had been preserved for 27,000 years.

Scientists caution that additional viruses exposed by melting ice might be "disastrous" and cause new pandemics, even though the viruses are not considered a risk to people.

For instance, the permafrost in Alaska once contained the influenza virus that spread in 1981, which might have caused another outbreak.

Numerous research has examined the potential effects of such diseases on people, but the most recent focuses on an area that has received less attention - the environment.

The team conducted artificial evolution tests where digital virus-like viruses from the past attacked populations of bacteria-like hosts to quantify the ecological dangers posed by these germs using computer simulations.

Researchers had a number of theories, one of which was that ancient pathogens might be more vulnerable to modern pathogen competition.

The researchers hypothesized that modern hosts may have evaded ancient infections during their co-evolutionary history and may still possess their developed resistance, making it difficult for invaders to identify susceptible hosts.

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Modern Host Lost Resistance

The scientists hypothesized that intruders might have an edge over contemporary infections engaged in the host-pathogen arms race.

After developing the simulations, the team compared the diversity of host bacteria under invasion conditions to that in communities without invasion.

The simulation's outcomes demonstrated that the intruder was more persistent than 33.6% of the local pathogens. While the majority of the dominant foreign bodies had minimal impact on the demographics of the wider group. Only one percent of them produced unexpected outcomes.

The study reported that some simulations reduced diversity by up to 12 percent compared to the control simulations. In contrast, others caused up to one-third of the host species to go extinct.

Even though the risks posed by this one percent of released pathogens may appear negligible, the sheer volume of ancient germs routinely discharged into contemporary communities makes outbreak events a significant risk.

The study was published in PLOS Computational Biology.