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Researchers have discovered nearly 1,700 ancient virus species hidden in the glacial ice of the Himalayas, a study says. Nearly three-quarters of them were previously unknown to science, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience. They found the virus thanks to fragments of viral DNA frozen in ice cores taken from the Gulia Glacier on the Tibetan Plateau, which lies about four miles above sea level. The researchers now hope to understand how viruses adapt to climate change and how current viruses might change in the years to come.
What the researchers' study says
According to Newsweek, Zhiping Zhong, a research associate at Ohio State University's Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and co-author of the study, said in a statement that before this work, viruses were linked to large-scale changes in Earth's climate on a large scale had not been explored. He said, “Glacier ice is very precious and we usually do not have the large amount of material needed to study viruses and microorganisms.”
According to the study, this new discovery provides important information about the adaptation and evolution of this ancient virus with significant changes in the climate. The virus discovered in 2015 came from a nine-field time horizon spanning three cold-warm cycles over the past 41,000 years, the researchers said. One of the viral communities found in the ice core dates back about 11,500 years, when the climate went from the cold of the last ice age to the warmth of the Holocene era, in which we live now, the study said.
About a quarter of the viruses in the ice core are from humans, Jing Zhong said,
That suggests at least a possible link between viruses and climate change. The researchers also found that about a quarter of the viruses in the ice core overlap with species found elsewhere. That means some of them were brought in from regions like the Middle East or the Arctic, they said.
Researchers hope for a bright future
Now with the new findings, researchers hope to better predict how our modern viruses will respond to the increasing effects of climate change in the years to come. “To me, this science is a new tool that can answer fundamental climate questions that we cannot answer otherwise,” said Lonnie Thompson, a professor of Earth sciences at Ohio State and a co-author of the study.