Scientists have discovered more than 1,700 ancient viruses lurking deep within a glacier in western China, most of which have never been seen before.
This raises concerns that as the world warms and ice melts, pathogens unknown to science could be released and trigger a deadly pandemic.
Researchers found the viruses in a 300-meter-long ice core taken from the Guliya Glacier on the Tibetan Plateau, located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia.
Viruses date back 41,000 years and have survived three major shifts from cold to warm climates.
Just one day after the researchers published their study, rapper-turned-actor Chris “Ludacris” Bridges posted a video of himself drinking meltwater from an Alaskan glacier.
Rapper-turned-actor Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges has sparked health concerns after posting a video of himself drinking meltwater from an Alaskan glacier.
The video garnered millions of views on TikTok and Instagram, sparking a wave of concern that he was risking his life by drinking untreated glacier water.
But a glaciologist has since declared that it is “perfectly fine” and that water from a glacial melt stream is “some of the cleanest water you can ever get”.
However, the public’s concerns are not entirely unfounded.
Elsewhere around the world, deadly pathogens have emerged from melting permafrost, fueling fears of a potential outbreak.
In 2016, for example, anthrax spores escaped from the carcass of an animal that had been frozen in Siberian permafrost for 75 years. Dozens of people were hospitalized and one child died.
But fortunately, the 1,700 viruses found in this latest study do not pose a threat to human health, the researchers said.
This is because these viruses can only infect archaea (which are single-celled organisms) and bacteria, and cannot make humans, animals or even plants sick.
But studying them is important because they offer a window into Earth’s deep climate history and could help us understand what future microbial communities might be like.
The team of researchers led by Ohio State University drilled more than 300 meters into the Guliya Glacier, a massive ice sheet located on the northwestern Tibetan Plateau.
The resulting ice core was divided into nine segments, each representing a different time horizon and climate period. The segments ranged in age from 160 to 41,000 years.
The researchers extracted DNA from each segment and used a process called metagenomic analysis to identify each individual viral strain.
The Guliya Glacier is a huge ice sheet located on the northwestern Tibetan Plateau. Researchers extracted a 300-meter-long ice core from this glacier and analyzed the viruses inside it.
They ended up cataloging roughly 50 times more viral data than scientists had previously collected from glaciers.
From their analysis, the researchers found that the viral communities looked very different depending on the weather conditions at the time they were frozen.
“We saw clear changes in viruses that existed in colder climates versus those in warmer climates,” study co-author and Ohio State University microbiologist Matthew Sullivan told Popular Science.
For example, 11,500 years ago a distinct community of viruses formed, while the climate was… moving from the cold Last Glacial Period to the warmer Holocene Epoch, in which we currently find ourselves.
“This at least indicates the potential connection between viruses and climate change,” said study co-author ZhiPing Zhong, a research associate in microbiology at Ohio State University.
Sullivan, Zhong and their colleagues published their findings in the journal Natural Geosciences.
