GLOBAL WARMING: DEATH IN THE DEEP-FREEZE
By Kate Ravilious
The Indpendent
September 28, 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article315614.ece
Last week, the latest study to track global warming revealed that Alaska's
snowless season is lengthening. As the world warms and ice-sheets and
glaciers begin to melt, most of us worry about how the earth will respond
and what kind of impact climate change will have. Will flooding become a
regular feature, or is the land going to become parched? Are hurricanes and
typhoons going to spring up in places they have never visited before? Is the
rising sea level going to swallow some of the world's most fertile farmland,
along with millions of homes?
All of these are valid concerns, but now it turns out that the impact of
global warming could be worse than we first imagined. Ice sheets are mostly
frozen water, but during the freezing process they can also incorporate
organisms such as fungi, bacteria and viruses. Some scientists believe that
climate change could unleash ancient illnesses as ice sheets drip away and
bacteria and viruses defrost. Illnesses we thought we had eradicated, like
polio, could reappear, while common viruses like human influenza could have
a devastating effect if melting glaciers release a bygone strain to which we
have no resistance. What is more, new species unknown to science may
re-emerge. And it is not just humans who are at risk: animals, plants and
marine creatures could also suffer as ancient microbes thaw out.
In 1999, Scott Rogers from Bowling Green State University in Ohio and his
colleagues reported finding the tomato mosaic tobamovirus (ToMV) in 17
different ice-core sections at two locations deep inside the Greenland ice
pack. Gentle defrosting in the lab revealed that this common plant pathogen
had survived being entombed in ice for 140,000 years. "ToMV belongs to a
family of viruses with a particularly tough protein coat, which helps it to
survive in these extreme environments," says Rogers.
Since then Rogers has found many other microbes in ice samples from
Greenland, Antarctica, and Siberia. And this has turned out to be just the
tip of the microbial iceberg. Over the last 10 years biologists have
discovered bacteria, fungi, viruses, algae and yeast hibernating under as
much as 4km of solid ice, in locations all over the world.
Most recently Rogers and his colleagues found the human influenza virus in
one-year-old Siberian lake ice. "The influenza virus isn't quite as hardy as
ToMV, but this finding showed that it is capable of surviving in ice," says
Rogers. This particular strain of influenza had only hibernated for one year
and doesn't present much of a threat to humans, but it shows that there is
potential for a human virus to survive the freezing process for much longer.
Imagine if older, more vicious strains, such as the virus responsible for
the Spanish flu pandemic, which killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million
people in 1918 - 1919, were to re-emerge.
Not all scientists are convinced by these viral discoveries, and some argue
that they are more likely to have arrived in the ice via contamination
during the drilling process. However, Rogers is confident that this is not
the case. "We use a chemical called sodium hypochlorite to decontaminate the
outer ice surface, which is then followed by extraction or melting of an
interior section of the core," he explains.
So if these viruses have been huddled in the ice for thousands of years, how
did they get there in the first place? According to Rogers one very
effective way for viruses to travel the world is to hitch a ride in the guts
of migrating birds. "The Siberian lake ice where we found the human
influenza virus is on a bird migration route. This is the most likely way
that the virus arrived," he says. Other modes of transport could include
riding on aquatic mammals such as seals, clinging to grains of dust, or
water transport via rivers and ocean currents.
"Human beings have been more prevalent in northern areas for a long time and
so human viruses are more likely to have been frozen into Northern
Hemisphere ice sheets," says Dany Shoham, one of Rogers' colleagues from
Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Humans have lived close to glaciers in the
European Alps, frozen fjords in Scandinavia and frosty Siberian lakes for
thousands of years, making it an easy hop for viruses looking for a place to
hibernate for a while. None the less, Shoham says that this doesn't mean the
ice sheets of the Southern Hemisphere don't contain viruses.
Thankfully, not all viruses will remain viable after thawing out from
hibernation in an ice sheet. "We routinely keep viruses at minus 80C when we
want to store them in the lab, so viruses can certainly survive freezing,
but they are often fragile to processes such as freeze-thaw," explains
Geoffrey Smith, head of the virology department at Imperial College London.
In the lab it is possible to defrost viruses gently, but outside they are
subject to climatic extremes. Only viruses that contain the tough protein
coat, like ToMV, are likely to be able to retain all the information they
need while being repeatedly frozen and defrosted. This rules out plenty of
human viruses, but still leaves a few very nasty options including smallpox,
polio, hepatitis A and, of course, influenza.
Shoham believes that the influenza virus is the most likely to emerge from
the freeze/thaw process in a fit enough state to re-infect humans. "It has
the properties that would allow it to survive the ice and the ability to
transfer between animals and humans once it is out," he says. What is more,
Shoham contends that an ancient version of human influenza could be a very
potent weapon. "Ancient viruses are more dangerous because the natural herd
immunity is reduced over time. After just one or two generations the natural
herd immunity is eliminated," he says. Water-borne viruses, such as
hepatitis A and polio, are less of a threat because they rely on water
currents to reach their victims.
One worrying scenario would be the creation of a super virus via the
recombination of ancient and modern strains. "If only one or two genes from
an ancient influenza virus were to interchange with the modern avian
influenza, it could become contagious and generate a new pandemic," says
Shoham.
By hiding in the deep freeze for a few thousand years, viruses could be
avoiding unfavourable conditions on the earth's surface, such as hosts with
a strong immunity. Rogers and his colleagues think that these icy holidays
may even be a deliberate part of viral evolution. Equally, the same argument
could mean that it is harder for a virus to slot back into the world once it
has been defrosted. "Evolutionary change over time may mean that an emerging
ancient virus finds it difficult to adopt a niche," says Shoham.
If viruses do hide away in ice-sheets periodically, then there should be
evidence of pandemics occurring during the earth's warmer periods in the
past.
"It may be possible to relate historical extinction events with outbreaks of
specific pathogens like influenza and cholera," says Rogers. As yet no
research team has managed to prove this link, but it is something that
Rogers and his colleagues are keen to investigate further.
So how much of a risk do these frozen viruses really represent? Without
having any definite evidence that viruses are able to complete the full
freeze-thaw cycle and go on to re-infect, it is hard to say. Some scientists
are not too concerned, while others think it is worth looking into.
"It is certainly conceivable that viruses can survive frozen for thousands
of years, but it is not top of the list of my worries. We have enough to
think about with the number of dangerous viruses at high concentration
around today," says Geoffrey Smith.
Meanwhile, Dany Shoham believes that the potential consequences are too dire
to be ignored, but agrees that there is little we can do to protect
ourselves.
"The likelihood of infection from an ancient virus is, in general, low, but
once it does take place the impact will be enormous," he says. "None the
less, this freezing mechanism is so complex, vague and unpredictable that
there is really nothing we can do to protect ourselves."
Perhaps the only grain of comfort is that this won't be the first time that
viruses have emerged from the ice. We must have survived such an event
before.
--
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