Ancient pathogens that escape from melting permafrost have real potential to damage microbial communities and might potentially threaten human health, according to a new study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea that “time-travelling” pathogens trapped in ice or hidden in remote laboratory facilities could break free to cause catastrophic outbreaks has inspired generations of novelists and screenwriters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While melting glaciers and permafrost are giving many types of dormant microbes the opportunity to re-emerge, the potential threats to human health and the environment posed by these microbes have been difficult to estimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a new study, a team led by Giovanni Strona of the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Brussels, Belgium, quantified the ecological risks posed by these microbes using computer simulations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers performed artificial evolution experiments where digital virus-like pathogens from the past invade communities of bacteria-like hosts. They compared the effects of invading pathogens on the diversity of host bacteria to diversity in control communities where no invasion occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The team found that in their simulations, the ancient invading pathogens could often survive and evolve in the modern community, and about 3 per cent became dominant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While most of the dominant invaders had little effect on the composition of the larger community, about 1 per cent of the invaders yielded unpredictable results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some caused up to one third of the host species to die out, while others increased diversity by up to 12 per cent compared to the control simulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The risks posed by this 1 per cent of released pathogens may seem small, but given the sheer number of ancient microbes regularly released into modern communities, outbreak events still represent a substantial hazard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new findings, published in the open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology, suggest that the risks posed by time-travelling pathogens — so far confined to science fiction stories — could in fact be powerful drivers of ecological change and threats to human health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ancient pathogens that escape from melting permafrost have real potential to damage microbial communities and might potentially threaten human health, according to a new study. The idea that “time-travelling” pathogens trapped in ice or hidden in remote laboratory facilities could break free to cause catastrophic outbreaks has inspired generations of novelists and screenwriters. While melting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":366492,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}