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Previously collected ice cores taken from a Tibetan glacier have revealed 28 new genera of viruses according to researchers from Ohio State University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
A genus (plural genera) in biology encompasses multiple species. For example, Lions and Tigers (not bears) belong to the genus Panthera
The ice cores had not been protected from surface contamination when collected from the Guliya ice cap (northwestern Tibetan Plateau, China), so it was first necessary to establish "ultra-clean microbial and viral sampling procedures for glacier ice."
To ensure a pristine sample, the researchers, working in a freezer, first cut off some of the outer layer of each core sample. Each of the samples was then washed with ethanol to melt off approximately 0.2 inches of ice. Each was then washed again with sterile water to melt off another 0.2 inches of ice. The team also created test samples by repeating the same cleaning procedure on ice cores that had first been covered with known viruses and bacteria. The samples that remained were then deemed pristine and ready for study.
The study of the cores revealed a total of 33 groups of viruses with the majority previously unseen. The researchers note the importance of the work exposing the potential of melting glaciers to unleash deadly viruses.
Journal Reference
Zhi-Ping Zhong et al. Glacier ice archives fifteen-thousand-year-old viruses, bioRxiv (2020). DOI: 10.1101/2020.01.03.894675
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:28PM (4 children)
"Scientists Discover Nearly 200,000 Kinds of Ocean Viruses"
https://www.quantamagazine.org/scientists-discover-nearly-200000-kinds-of-ocean-viruses-20190425/ [quantamagazine.org]
180000 new groups is a little tiny bit more than 33, but ocean is not as FUD-worthy as a glacier, is it?
BTW, same thing with bacteria; we still find dozens, hundreds, or thousands "new" species and genera every time we really look around.
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2019/11/18/Novel-marine-bacteria-could-yield-new-antibiotics/3281574101143/ [upi.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:03PM (1 child)
You missed out the ones in the atmosphere.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:04PM
And we hope to continue doing so - hence the face masks and travel bans in China. :-)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @01:51PM (1 child)
Hundreds or thousands of species. Genera, less commonly. And what you link to says
which means geographically separated populations (note they had a lot of new Arctic data) of the "same" species are different groups, so your example actually found far fewer than 180,000 new species.
Yeah we find new things when we look new places or with new techniques. We also find new human diseases when we look with new techniques within human populations... that doesn't make those human diseases any less important.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @05:53PM
Here is the thing you obviously know nothing about, and it is the cornerstone of understanding what a "species" etc. even means when applied to bacteria and viruses.
Enjoy the new knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer [wikipedia.org]