BY: SINEAD MULHERN
A group of 16 Canadian archaeologists dug up a 700-year-old virus encased in frozen caribou dung in the Northwest Territories. While this might sound like a load of shit, when they sent it to a lab for analysis, it was brought back to life and infected a tobacco plant.
The archaeological team, led by Tom Andrews of Yellowknife’s Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, was on a dig in the Selwyn Mountains (close to the Yukon border) because they suspected Aboriginals once would have hunted caribou on the ice patches there. They were right. Along with the virus, they found arrows, stone tools and leg hold traps.
What was surprising about the virus’s DNA was that it was in such great condition even after centuries in the deep freeze. By comparison, the caribou’s DNA was found to have significantly disintegrated. Multiple copies of the virus were produced.
For thousands of years, ancient hunters would follow the caribou onto the ice patches of the mountains, leaving behind many artifacts that were also found preserved in the ice
Scientists think that this ancient find could give a better understanding as to how viruses evolve over time. This would be incredibly valuable since so little is known about them now. Ancient viruses, unsurprisingly, haven’t been preserved very well. If we can understand how viruses have evolved, it would give researchers a better idea of where they could be heading.
Brian Moorman is a University of Calgary geologist and was a part of the expedition. “When we’re dealing with viruses, for example, the flu, we’re concerned with how they evolve,” he said in a University of Calgary newsletter. “Because if they’re evolving faster than we can keep up with them, we’re in trouble.”
But there’s a fear factor to a find like the Caribou dung virus, and Moorman thinks there’s good reason. Just recently, he explained to Canadian Geographic that permafrost covers half of Canada and if viruses like this one can revive themselves after being frozen in these grounds for so long, we have to consider what infectious agents could become unleashed into the environment as temperatures continue to rise. That would mean we would have to be prepared to combat whatever is buried deep, deep in the ice.
And ice patches are melting. To give some context: the very patch that researchers found the virus on stood on a 4,000-year-old ice patch not long ago. Today it’s completed thawed. It melted away between 2008 and 2011.
This isn’t the first time a preserved virus has been brought back. The CBC reported that last year a 30,000-year-old strand was found frozen in Siberia. It was brought back and infected an amoeba.
Caribou often gather on the ice patches in the Selwyn Mountains to cool down in the summer, because of this they are unique repositories of archaeological facts and biological specimens.
Sources: sciencemag.org, blogspot.com
