SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Beth Mole at ArsTechnica has written an interesting article about a recent discovery that the oldest sample of smallpox is younger than we thought.
From the pockmarked mummified pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the epic triumph of complete global eradication, smallpox had a remarkable history. But that lengthy history may be in for a massive revision, thanks to a little mummy found in the crypt of a Lithuanian church.
The mummy, thought to be of a child between the ages of two and four who died sometime between 1643 and 1665, teemed with the genetic remains of the bygone virus. That smallpox DNA was the oldest ever found—yet it was quite young, evolutionarily speaking. In fact, genetic analysis of the preserved smallpox blueprints, published Thursday in Current Biology[open, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.10.061], suggests that smallpox is just hundreds of years old, not millennia as many had thought. The finding stands to rewrite the virus' storied past.
Reports of blistering, puss-packed rashes have speckled historical records for thousands of years. The dimpled pharaohs and spotted plagues in China during the 4th century were considered proof that the smallpox virus—aka Variola—plagued humankind for a long, long time. Smallpox caused massive outbreaks throughout Europe in the 17th century and devastated populations in the New World. But, in 1796, it became the first disease for which there was a vaccine. And in 1979, smallpox was declared the first—and still only—infectious disease of humans to be globally eradicated. (Rinderpest, an infectious disease of cattle and some other animals, has also been eradicated.)
The latter part of smallpox's history is still solid, thankfully. But the ancient past may crumble to dust.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 12 2016, @08:08PM
"humans are apparently the sole reservoir for smallpox."
The article suggested that some variety of pox jumped from another animal to man. If that be so, then man is probably not the sole reservoir. The virus is probably still at large out there, in the animal world, waiting for an opportunity to make the jump again. Among the more credible articles I've read on AIDS, the virus doesn't readily make the jump from other simians to man. But, when it DID make the jump, it proved to be pretty deadly.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @09:34PM
It supposedly happens about as often as US presidential elections:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/081101_hivorigins [berkeley.edu]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @09:44PM
Variola (human smallpox) does not have any known animal reservoir, but there are poxviruses of many animals such as cowpox, canarypox, and monkeypox. While some of these viruses have the possibility of infecting humans, they are distinct from Variola and not well adapted to humans.
Poxviruses are large DNA viruses with complicated genomes that do not have as high a mutation rate as RNA viruses and would not readily undergo reassortment (like influenza) or recombination (like HIV).