30,000 Year Old Siberia Virus Comes Back To Life

[Auron225]

When will people learn? Unearthing ancient frozen shit will kill us all;

Spoiler: Exhibit A

EDIT:

Then it adapts, jumps the species barrier and turns us all into zombies!

actually form the description of what it does it would be more along the lines of the blob.

That doesn't make it any better

 

[One of Many]

Sure, it's only infecting single-celled organisms now but one day it will jump to huskies. Luckily there is a documentary about this sort of thing.


We need to bring Snake MacReady out of retirement.

Always a good use of The Thing but I was thinking it's a bit more like The Thaw

 

[AntiChrist]

Somebody bring Michael Crichton back from the grave. He has a novel to write!

My initial reaction upon reading this was also: "Get Michael Crichton on the case!". Then I remembered that he's dead. Whoops.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Zombie virus, here we come.

Or at the very least we'll start seeing stories to feature this phenomenon coming out in the next few years.

 

[Godhead]

They dug too deep. When will people learn.

It's pretty crazy to think about though, 30,000 year old virus' wiping us out would just be embarrassing.

Eventually the Balrog will come and they have to start their fortress all over again.

OT: Interesting discovery, but they should be careful to make sure that it doesn't contaminate something that it actually could infect. And that's the cold truth!

 

[dalek sec]

I betting people will now use this as a plotline for future horro movies.

I could have sworn something like this was done for a older episode of the X-Files back in day....

OT: So does this mean I should go get my flamethrower out of the closet now? I forget, isn't this a concern about say we go to Mars and bring back a virus or something by mistake or am I thinking of a really bad sci-fi movie plot?

 

[the December King]

Viruses aren't organisms so it didn't really "come back to life." It just remained viable.

I was just about to get my angry stick out for this. Viruses are not alive - they can't come back to life. They can only become active. They can also go inactive as many of them do.

Could this be fixed because it make the writer look rather dumb.
Because he even quoted:

"This is the first time we've seen a virus that's still infectious after this length of time,

I went to look into this, and it seems that viruses are contentiously considered a form of life, or at the edges of the definitions of life, at least on wikipedia.

Are either of you virologists or biologists or otherwise educated who could elaborate further on this?

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Space agencies have decontamination protocols in slim chance an alien disease is encountered. Yet, here we have people digging 10,000 year old mammoths out of the ice and trying to snack on them.

We already know that water bears can survive everything short of a point blank nuclear blast, and that 0.001% that of bacteria that soap and hand sanitizers are missing are getting stronger and multiplying. So, it's no stretch to think there's preserved pathogens waiting out there to be uncovered.

 

[Kentr_Wrolfsong]

I could have sworn something like this was done for a older episode of the X-Files back in day....

Season One, Episode 8. "Ice." Good episode.

 

[SinisterGehe]

Viruses aren't organisms so it didn't really "come back to life." It just remained viable.

I was just about to get my angry stick out for this. Viruses are not alive - they can't come back to life. They can only become active. They can also go inactive as many of them do.

Could this be fixed because it make the writer look rather dumb.
Because he even quoted:

"This is the first time we've seen a virus that's still infectious after this length of time,

I went to look into this, and it seems that viruses are contentiously considered a form of life, or at the edges of the definitions of life, at least on wikipedia.

Are either of you virologists or biologists or otherwise educated who could elaborate further on this?

Viruses are really odd because they don't have any vital functions. They do not have any form of metabolism. - hence why they aren't considered to be "alive". By the definition that we have.

But viruses have DNA or RNA, that they inject to living cells that they turn into factories that produce more identical* virions. They basically are shells of genetic material. They reproduce and spread - so they can be considered to be "alive" because they have a biological function that they carry forward. *They even mutate and change over time and due to environmental pressure.

I think the definition are they alive or not depends on what you consider being alive is. Is it ability to reproduce - then even prions would be classified under "Alive" when they only really are proteins. Metabolism - Then it would set a clear line to certain pathogens and simpler life forms.

This is why viruses are one of the most interesting things in biology.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Viruses aren't organisms so it didn't really "come back to life." It just remained viable.

I was just about to get my angry stick out for this. Viruses are not alive - they can't come back to life. They can only become active. They can also go inactive as many of them do.

Could this be fixed because it make the writer look rather dumb.
Because he even quoted:

"This is the first time we've seen a virus that's still infectious after this length of time,

I went to look into this, and it seems that viruses are contentiously considered a form of life, or at the edges of the definitions of life, at least on wikipedia.

Are either of you virologists or biologists or otherwise educated who could elaborate further on this?

All living things possess these 4 capabilities: response to stimuli, growth, reproduction, and the maintenance of homeostasis. Viruses do not grow or maintain homeostasis at all, their behavior is purely mechanical, and they only reproduce through hosts assembling copies. Possessing 0-2 (depending on semantic perspective) of life's 4 defining characteristics makes them very definitively non-living.

The debate only exists as it does because in a higher-order sense viruses seem like organisms so perhaps how life is defined should be changed to accommodate.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Didn't the Chimera virus from "Resistance" start in Siberia?

If you'll excuse me, it's time to go stock up on guns and ammo.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Not the most science-y guy here, how do they know how old it is? I want to learn something today

 

[Evil Smurf]

I thought this was a side effect of bringing back the wolly mammoths.

 

[Jamieson 90]

This is what happens when you dig too deep; Ancient Bacteria isn't something to be messed with. Isn't that how the plague came about when we mined too far?

 

[busterkeatonrules]

I thought this was a side effect of bringing back the wolly mammoths.

Me too. That, or a preliminary, smaller-scale experiment. Like a bit of a warm-up project before they go for something multi-celled!

 

[Shinkicker444]

Saw that picture tied with the article, and the first thing that pops into mind was http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Parasitic_ice_worm

"I am fine" Capcha.. /oh you.

 

[Saulkar]

I still want to know how its RNA did not degrade. I thought DNA became unviable after half that time, would not the same hold true for RNA?

 

[otakon17]

Sure, it's only infecting single-celled organisms now but one day it will jump to huskies. Luckily there is a documentary about this sort of thing.


We need to bring Snake MacReady out of retirement.

Eeyup, this immediately came to mind too. I don't want to be some outer space squids next meal and suit dammit!

OT: That's actually pretty fucking horrifying.

 

[michael87cn]

Why do people just accept the age they state? They provide no proof. "Look, a 30,000 old virus!" "How do you know its that old?" "Because the ice is that old!" "How do you know the ice is that old?" "We just do!"