Are There Ancient Viruses Trapped in Glaciers?
添加时间：2020-11-09 20:10:24 浏览：2265
The world's glaciers are melting.
These giant sheets of ice hold very old viruses and bacteria. And, as the ice melts, some of them may be waking up.
In 2015, scientists took samples of ice from a 15,000-year-old glacier in Tibet. The scientists found 28 new virus frozen in the ice.
Experts think they can learn a lot from these ancient viruses. They hope to find out how microbes survive. This may help future people, as new viruses turn up in the Earth's changing climate.
However, others worry if these viruses and bacteria could cause sickness in humans.
As yet, the viruses found in the Tibetan glacier do not seem to be a threat to people. But melting ice elsewhere in the world might be a different story.
In 2016, parts of Siberia saw a heat wave. The higher temperatures caused melting of the region's permafrost. This is a layer of soil that normally stays frozen year-round.
As the ground warmed, bacteria escaped. This caused a large outbreak of Anthrax in the area.
The risk from permafrost microbes is inherently unknowable.
"Following our work and that of others, there is now a non-zero probability that melted microbes could infect us," says biologist Jean-Michel Claverie at Aix-Marseille University.
"How likely that is is not known, but it's a possibility. It could be bacteria that are curable with antibiotics, or resistant bacteria, or a virus."