Researchers have unearthed nearly 1,700 ancient virus species hidden within the glacial ice of the Himalayas, a new study has found. According to the paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, around three-quarters of these viruses were previously unknown to science. They were discovered thanks to scraps of viral DNA frozen in ice cores taken from the Guliya Glacier on the Tibetan Plateau, which sits nearly four miles above sea level. Researchers now hope to understand how viruses adapt to changes in climate and how the current viruses might change in the coming years.
"Before this work, how viruses linked to large-scale changes in Earth's climate had remained largely uninvestigated," study co-author ZhiPing Zhong, a research associate at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University, said in a statement, per Newsweek.
"Glacial ice is so precious, and we often don't have the large amounts of material required for virus and microbe research," he added.
According to the study, this latest discovery reveals key details of how these ancient viruses adapted and evolved with significant changes to the climate. The researchers said that the viruses, discovered in 2015, came from across "nine-time horizons, spanning three cold-warm cycles over the past 41,000 years". One of the viral communities found in the ice cores dated to around 11,500 years ago when the climate was shifting from the cold of the Last Glacial Stage to the warmer Holocene epoch in which we currently reside, the study said.
"This at least indicates the potential connection between viruses and climate change," said Mr Zhong.
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Further, the researchers also found that about a quarter of the viruses in the ice core overlapped with species found elsewhere. "That means some of them were potentially transported from areas like the Middle East or even the Arctic," said Mr Zhong.
Now, with the latest discovery, researchers hope to better predict how our modern-day viruses will react to the encroaching effects of climate change in the coming years. "To me, this science is a new tool that can answer basic climate questions that we couldn't have answered otherwise," said study co-author Lonnie Thompson, a professor in earth sciences at Ohio State.
Meanwhile, according to Newsweek, ancient viruses frozen in permafrost have been unearthed at other locations around the world, including Siberia. This has ignited fears that one of these viruses could infect humans as permafrost and glaciers around the world melt due to climate change. But thankfully, these ancient viruses likely infected bacteria rather than animals or humans, experts said.
