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The ice melts as the world warms up, and sometimes it gives up on things we really would prefer not to do. A study of the ice of an almost 15,000-year-old Tibetan glacier indicates that it may contain many viruses that we have never seen before. Viruses found so far probably can’t infect humans, let alone threaten our health, but we don’t yet know what’s behind them.
“These glaciers formed gradually, and along with the dust and gas, many viruses were also deposited in this ice,” Dr. Zhi-Ping Zhong of Ohio State University said in a statement. “Glaciers in western China are not well studied, and our goal is to use this information to reflect past environments. And viruses are part of those environments.”
Zhong and his co-authors helped solve this problem with an article in the journal Microbiome, analyzing ice cores collected near the summit of Guliya at 6,700 meters (22,000 feet) above sea level. Authors report finding the genetic codes of 33 viruses – only four of which were previously known. These four are phages, viruses that infect bacteria and are more likely to be used by humans than to pose a threat.
Naturally, we know less about the other 29 types of viruses, but these are thought to also live (if a virus can be considered alive) in soil microbes or plants, not animals. Many of their alleged hosts, especially Methylobacterium, were also found trapped in the ice.
“These are viruses that would have thrived in extreme environments,” said co-author Professor Matthew Sullivan. “These viruses have gene signatures that help them infect cells in cold environments – just surreal genetic signatures for how a virus is able to survive in extreme conditions. These aren’t easy signatures to extract, and the method Zhi-Ping developed to decontaminate carrots and study microbes and viruses in ice could help us search for these genetic sequences in other extreme icy environments – Mars, for example, the moon, or closer to at home in the Atacama Desert on Earth. ”
Finding viruses on the moon would be a shock to science, to say the least, but astrobiologists would like to apply these techniques to certain outer moons in the solar system.
Microbes were first discovered in glacial ice over a century ago, the newspaper notes. However, it was not until scientists got used to the idea of a world where the ice was melting faster that the subject received much study. Viruses have only been reported in glacial ice twice before, but this may reflect a lack of research, or the fact that most ice cores originate from Antarctica and Greenland, far from likely sources.
We believe viruses – especially in recent times – only harm their hosts. However, some are actually beneficial, and Zhong and Sullivan believe most of those found were likely to be. These viruses can help bacteria survive in extreme environments near the glacier, for example by transferring genes that help their hosts acquire nutrients.
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