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Scientists have suggested that ‘time-traveling pathogens’ released by thawing Arctic permafrost as the climate warms could pose a risk to modern ecosystems.
permafrost A hard layer of frozen ground made up of dirt, sand, and rock. high latitude or highland regions Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Tibetan Plateau, Northern Canada, etc. This layer of ice traps long-dormant microbes, but new research suggests that global warming could create favorable conditions for these pathogens to return from the past. It is said that there is a sexuality.
To better understand the possible ecological impact, an international team of researchers digitally modeled the interactions between ancient viruses and modern bacteria, a study published in the journal 27 July. Announced. PLOS Computational Biology.
Through tens of thousands of iterations, the researchers tracked how the virus affected the species diversity of the bacterial community. About 1% of ancient viruses wreaked havoc in the digital ecosystem. This pathogen increased diversity by up to 12% or conversely decreased species diversity by 32%. Virus intruders not only survived, they evolved over time, throwing the system out of balance.
Researchers used software called Avida to simulate whether pathogens would successfully invade ecosystems. In a two-dimensional grid, bacterial organisms interacted with the environment to compete for energy and space. Competitors who find their own niche are able to cycle and stay alive.
In doing so, slight errors occurred in reproduction, resulting in genetic diversity. gives more complex results Ecosystem. When viruses invaded this environment, like other parasites, they could only obtain energy by leaching from a suitable bacterial host. The host was then unable to receive the energy necessary to survive or reproduce, and subsequently died.
Does this mean that almost a third of humans and other organisms will soon be at risk of dying from a reawakened viral disease? No, but with lead author Giovanni Strona Author Corey Bradshaw said the findings add to the concern about the risks of a warming climate.
Over the past two decades, more research has been done to understand results such as: permafrost melts In the Arctic, etc. January 2022 NASA Survey This study explored Jean-Michel Clavery’s 10-year study of the effects of carbon release during rapid thawing events and potential infectious agents trapped in permafrost.
Clavery, emeritus professor of medicine and genomics at the Aix-Marseille University Medical School, resurrected what he called a “zombie” virus from permafrost in 2014 and 2015, and he and his team discovered an ancient virus capable of infecting amoebas. reported five new families of As previously reported by CNN, a February study revealed. A study led by Craberry proved that ancient microbes could still be infectious despite being dormant for tens of thousands of years.
Using that assumption from Crabery’s study, Bradshaw, director of the Institute for Global Ecology at Flinders University, Australia, and Strona, senior fellow at the European Commission’s Collaborative Research Center, suggest that these pathogens We designed simulations to quantify the possible impact of
While the 1% of pathogens that cause significant destruction seems low, Bradshaw said 46 billion cells escape the permafrost each year.it goes far beyond number of stars in the galaxy.
“One percent of four sextillion is a number that most people cannot even imagine. There are so many opportunities for something like this to happen. There are so many potential viruses out there,” he told CNN in a phone interview.
Bradshaw compared viruses in permafrost to other invasive species. Most invasions fail in the real world, and this study reflects that. But the reason we still have problems with alien species is because they are so many introductions into the ecosystem, he said.
read more: Invasive species from around the world in pictures
It means that during the study’s successful invasion event, the virus killed off a third of all bacteria in the digital ecosystem, even with a consequent loss of 32% in species diversity. It’s not something to do, Strona said. Rather, he means that bacterial diversity across ecosystems has decreased by 32%.
When viruses infect bacteria and kill their hosts, they have devastating effects on ecosystems. Bradshaw said the remaining species were forced into an arms race to survive because resources that existed in equilibrium simply became unavailable.predator and prey fought for the use of resources Anything left over unbalances the system. If there are fewer predators to eat their prey, the prey will thrive, become overpopulated, and overuse resources. After that, overproduction led to a decline in prey populations through natural selection. If there are too many predators, they will consume too much prey for sustainable survival, with the same consequences.
Researchers found that viral introduction was the sole source of large variations in species diversity.
Modern organisms, including humans, have few natural defenses against ancient pathogens. But for the research team, Strona and Bradshaw said the study is more a call to action than a real warning.
“No need to ring alarm bells just yet,” said Dr. Kimberly Minor, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He said he believes there are far more controllable and more pressing concerns when it comes to the climate crisis, such as slowing carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Miner, who was not involved in the study, said the study was a great first step toward quantifying the risks from these unknown variables. However, the possibility of infection by these emerging pathogens remains “highly unlikely.”
Areas of the Earth’s permafrost are sparsely populated. Even if the ancient pathogen somehow escaped, finding people to infect it would be difficult. What’s more, permafrost is slowly thawing throughout the year at a rate of about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) per season, and most of the four sextillion cells are released during this slow thawing, Miner said.
Sudden thawing of Arctic permafrost, sometimes as fast as a few days, “is what we are most concerned about in terms of releasing organisms that we are not familiar with,” she said. explained.
Sudden thaws like this will become more common as average global temperatures rise. After record-breaking temperatures in July, drone footage has captured Siberia’s largest permafrost crater as underground ice melts and sinks.
Strona and Bradshaw said more research is needed to extend the implications of their findings to human and animal populations. Both researchers said their aim was to provide a framework for assessing the risk of biological intruders from a bygone era.
Whether it’s rising sea levels, deadly heat, or new pathogens, the only preventive measure in all these cases is to slow or stop carbon emissions that lead to global warming and protect Arctic ecosystems. the study authors said. Otherwise, they say, cascading effects on ecosystems would no longer be science fiction.