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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.
I seem to recall something similar happening on X-Files, Stargate, and Fringe. It didn't turn out so well.
the virus catches you
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
If you like The Thing then read this. It is a short story from The Thing's point of view.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
"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!
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!!!
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!
Then how come we haven't heard from the researchers for the past couple of weeks?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm no biologist, but... don't viruses mutate quickly and unpredictably? And perhaps into a strain that is able to infect mammals?