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Scientists Revive a Giant 30,000 Year Old Virus From Ice
bmahersciwriter writes "It might be terrifying if we were amoebae. Instead, it's just fascinating. The virus, found in a hunk of Siberian ice, is huge, but also loosely packaged, which is strange says evolutionary biologist Jean-Michel Claverie: 'We thought it was a property of viruses that they pack DNA extremely tightly into the smallest particle possible, but this guy is 150 times less compacted than any bacteriophage [viruses that infect bacteria]. We don't understand anything anymore!'"
This virus will be our undoing. The end is nigh!
just hope that this bug is not designed to attack large, warm blooded, animals.
Revive a 30,000 year old virus, they said. It'll be fun they said.
could possibly go wrong?
There may be no "I" in team, but there's also no "F" in way.
Beh. You can be the size of a basketball if you plan on infecting these beasties
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Where the Stuxnet virus came from...
I seem to recall something similar happening on X-Files, Stargate, and Fringe. It didn't turn out so well.
the virus catches you
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Code bloat! Nature finally optimized for the present day.
Jean-Michel Claverie: 'We thought it was a property of viruses that they pack DNA extremely tightly into the smallest particle possible, but this guy is 150 times less compacted than any bacteriophage [viruses that infect bacteria].
I am sure this scientist is going to be perplexed by this too. this . I expect him to say, "I expect the human torso to be kind of roundish in cross section and two hands hanging by the side. But this guy is over compacted. We don't understand any thing anymore."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Beautiful, beautiful words from a scientific perspective.
What could possibly go wrong, right?
Let me know how things are going 28 days later.
The size could be the result of the process of being packed in ice for long periods of time. Some sort of virus fossilization where the virus dna gains dna from its prehistoric host.
sabertoothed virus!
So no one who commented even bothered to read the SUMMARY? Is the internet full of fruit flies? THIS VIRUS CANNOT ATTACK MAMMALS, IT GOES FOR AMOEBAE YOU ILLITERATE ADHD PATIENTS!
"We don't understand anything anymore!" says the guy reviving a 30,000 year-old virus. sheesh.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
The crappy Resident Evil knock-off.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
Thus began the zombie apocalypse.....
Hmm.
I wonder if it's safe.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So this is how the zombie apocalypse starts.
Well, I for one welcome our 30k year old over sized virus overlords.
I'm surprised this thing is very different to modern viruses given that it's *only* 30K years old. I appreciate these things are always evolving, but I would've thought they'd have done most of their evolving in the previous 3-billion years or whatever. So presumably, being big wasn't a problem for a virus until relatively recently?
...what could possibly go wrong? Because, that simply can't be asked too many times, right?
Ugh.
It will actually turn out that this virus will simultaneously cure cancer and all known diseases in humans. They'll call it the Ponce de Leon infection as it also stops and even reverses the effects of old age, and will result in a sharp drop in mortality rates and a rapid increase in population.
Eventually, the Earth's population of humans will outstrip its ability to support them.
Then the real carnage begins.
It's possible that this one was warped by its environment.
Another possibility is that we're looking at a sign of evolution here.
It's possible that 30,000 years ago, the environment (and carriers) could support the existence of larger, loosely packed viruses.
Then with the advance of medicine and sanitation (and possibly changes in climate), that behemoths like this simply weren't viable anymore. They were too fragile (or just too obviously large) to withstand the immune responses in healthier, cleaner hosts.
As such, these oversized viruses died off the same way various megafauna did. Their ecological niche was either stressed (or closed). Thus the only survivors were smaller, more compact variants.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Obviously... when you're digging up 30,000 year old virus, right about the same time the Neanderthal disappeared.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Just what do people think they mean when they write shit like this?
1/150th as dense?
0.66% space/material efficient?
150 * the size?
Captain Kirk already visited such a planet with no disease and no death that had dramatic overpopulation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Mumbai, India has 33,000 people per square km, which makes places with only really high population density like London (8500 people per square km) seem sparsely populated.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
There are single celled organisms at the bottom of the ocean, xenophyophores are one example, that are single-cell creatures visible to the human eye --- and in fact larger than a centimeter.
It should come as no surprise there are giant viruses in more primitive times, more primitive times are alive and well in the ancient creatures that live in the deepest parts of the oceans.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
"it might have a few novel antigens" - infamous quote from pre-antigen-ravaged world
and humans go and bring it back. This oughtta be good. Lets hope this tinkering with disaster is handled correctly, or shaved, sterilized and destroyed.
Revive? How do you revive something that is inanimate matter?
Oh! That's right!!! For evolution to be correct then viruses have to alive.
Smallest unit of life is the cell.
What IF? What will Happened? What should YOU gonna do? and What we should have to do? How to prevent? how to protect? I think every questions goes like that! The name itself viral! It will infect. Do we have to be scared of? :(
Stop the tech before it's too late we don't have enough antibiotics or anti viral as it is let something go that we have no knowledge of and it is Pandoras box I beg you quit now
Of course it's less packed. They didn't have compression algorhytims back then. It's an obsolete virus anyway, I bet it can't run on any modern animal's OS.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
Supposedly, the Black Death came to Europe from the Crimea and/or further east near China. Look how well that worked out.
It's interesting that while a lot of super scary viruses originated in sub-Saharan Africa, there are other origin places with radically different environmental conditions.
It must be the Chinese icebreaker, but it was too slow a virus and frozen into the ice...
Lots call it "The Thing"
Just means that modern humans have had 30,000 years for their immune systems to evolve additional defenses.
Talk to me when you find a virus from 30,000 years in the future, then I'll be scared! :)