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posted by chromas on Saturday January 25 2020, @02:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-dead-yet dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:01PM (2 children)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:01PM (#948525) Journal
    Last I looked, humans were around 15,000 years ago. And 50,000 years ago. And the earliest ones have been tracked back to about 300,000 years ago. It's just not a case of "1st contact".
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @01:45PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @01:45PM (#948835)

    What? Grasses and hogs were both around 15,000 years ago, and both around 500,000 years ago[1]. And I can assure you that for the last few centuries, until the last handful, there were none on the Hawaiian islands.[2]

    How does what you say make any sense in the context of geographically isolated populations, or the specific example?

    You're either being deliberately obtuse and a bad actor, or unintentionally foolish. It's painful; please stop airing your foolishness. Not everyone enjoys the schadenfreude of wrongheaded loud persons, and it doesn't productively add to the conversation.

    [1] Cretaceous and Early Pleistocene, for grass and pigs, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass [wikipedia.org] and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boar [wikipedia.org]
    [2] Again even Wikipedia works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_Species_in_Hawaii [wikipedia.org] but there are great studies if you want to look into it.

    • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday January 26 2020, @05:28PM

      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Sunday January 26 2020, @05:28PM (#948921) Journal
      And those grasses are going to invade a human body and kill the person same as a virus? Your example is worse than an apple to orange comparison. Completely different life forms. Completely different scenarios. 15,000 year old viruses aren't a threat to humans - they didn't suddenly evolve 15,000 years ago and just as suddenly get frozen in time in isolation from humans. W were both around long before the last ice age.
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