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Wagamaga OP t1_jbppl4f wrote

A team of climate scientists from France, Russia and Germany has found that ancient viruses dormant for tens of thousands of years in permafrost can infect modern amoeba when they are revived. For their study, reported on the open-access site Viruses, the group collected several giant virus specimens from permafrost in Siberia and tested them to see if they could still infect modern creatures.

Prior research has shown that permafrost—frozen soil—is an excellent preservative. Many carcasses of frozen extinct animals have been extracted from permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere. Prior research has also shown that plant seeds lying dormant in permafrost can be coaxed to grow once revived. And there is evidence suggesting that viruses and bacteria trapped in permafrost could infect hosts if revived. In this new effort, the researchers tested this theory.

The effort by the research team followed up on prior work in 2014 that showed a 30,000-year-old virus could be revived—and that it could be infectious. The team followed up on that effort by reviving a different virus in 2015 and allowing it to infect an amoeba. In this new effort, the team collected several virus specimens from multiple permafrost sites across Siberia for lab testing.

For safety reasons, the research team collects only so-called giant viruses and only those that can infect amoeba, not humans or any other creature. In reviving the virus samples, the team found that they were still capable of infecting amoeba. They also found, via radiocarbon dating of the permafrost in which they were found, that the viruses had been in a dormant state for between 27,000 and 48,500 years

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-ancient-dormant-viruses-permafrost-revived.html

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SpecterGT260 t1_jbss817 wrote

Permafrost always reminds me of how broken the education system can be. Specifically because when in elementary school our teacher was describing it as "ground that has gotten so cold it can never unfreeze". I pressed, as a 3rd grader and asked if someone took a scoop of it and took it to the desert if it would remain frozen. She was adamant that, yes, it would remain frozen. I didn't ask her what would happen if we hurled it into the sun, but I'm curious what she would have said. For some reason I've never forgotten this exchange and it makes me think that maybe we should have people who know the material teaching and not people who have an advanced degree in babysitting.

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TheTussin t1_jbsz16a wrote

Probably won't get a lot of PhDs teaching 3rd grade

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SpecterGT260 t1_jbt0gc5 wrote

No, but it also doesn't take a PhD to realize that permafrost isn't impervious to the sun. In this story it took a 3rd grader

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Maverick0984 t1_jbtuson wrote

Probably more a function of your teacher and less a condemnation of the education system. There are stupid people all around us...

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SpecterGT260 t1_jbtzony wrote

It wasn't the only example. I had teachers in almost every grade that didn't know their own material and made very basic errors.

Had one tell us in middle school (geometry) that light reflects off a mirror always at a right angle. He also stuck to his guns on this until I asked him what would happen if you looked straight into a mirror and then moved 1 inch to the right. Would you be staring at the wall to your left?

Another middle school teacher was adamant that radicals just cancelled out negatives. Because -2 squared is 4, therefore any time you interact with a radical the negative just disappears. I ended up with detention for fighting for -sqrt(4) is in fact -2 like the book said and not a typo like the teacher insisted. To be fair, he normally taught gym, but this was supposed to be the advanced algebra class... And I was even in one of the better public school systems.

The problem is that the education degree has very little to do with the subject matter being taught. A tech CEO may know a lot about running a business but that doesn't mean they should be teaching the programmers code. Yet we have almost none of the basic subject matter in the training for those tasked with training our kids. It's silly

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Maverick0984 t1_jbu01jj wrote

Maybe your school was just bad? I don't know what to tell you. Your anecdotal experience differs wildly from mine.

I assume you're happy with what teachers are paid as well based on this "analysis"

Edit: typo

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SpecterGT260 t1_jbu13ij wrote

I addressed that. A top scoring school in ITBS/ITED. I went to a great college and ended up going to professional school. I don't feel I had any obstacles to the life I now have because of primary school. But there were still problems.

And yes, I think we should pay teachers more. It would draw in more people who are actually good educators. Are you trying to make a point?

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Maverick0984 t1_jbuaux3 wrote

My point was that your experience is completely anecdotal yet you claim it as fact. If your school was ranked well, then you got bad teachers in an otherwise good school. Assuming all teachers are improperly trained and dumb is just plain ignorant.

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SpecterGT260 t1_jbuc32a wrote

I claimed it as a personal opinion. You're looking for a fight and I'm not interested

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Maverick0984 t1_jbucu2h wrote

You never once mentioned the words "personal" or "opinion".

Here are some exerts from your posts:

>Permafrost always reminds me of how broken the education system can be. ​

>The problem is that the education degree has very little to do with the subject matter being taught...Yet we have almost none of the basic subject matter in the training for those tasked with training our kids. It's silly ​

Seems awfully universal to you in these posts my guy.

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SpecterGT260 t1_jbue3cq wrote

You still seem to be looking for a fight. Do you disagree that we should have educators that understand the material?

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Maverick0984 t1_jbuh3gm wrote

If that's your question, you clearly don't understand what I'm saying.

The vast majority of teachers do understand the material. You had some weird bad luck and that's the end of it.

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SpecterGT260 t1_jbujgmt wrote

It's weird how you don't seem aware that your statement is also anecdotal. My experience was that there are plenty who don't understand it. If you didn't have that experience perhaps you were lucky or you also didn't understand the material.

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Maverick0984 t1_jbuphok wrote

I'm not the one with the claim. Burden on proof lies with you.

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SpecterGT260 t1_jbuqone wrote

I'm not trying to prove anything. I am just stating my experience. Based on that experience, I believe the proportion of teachers who are teaching subjects they are unfamiliar with is too high.

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Maverick0984 t1_jbuqywb wrote

Yeah, that's not the only thing you said though. You made blanket claims. See the previous post of mine where I pointed a couple of these instances out. You are trying to backpedal those statements now.

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SpecterGT260 t1_jbusmrf wrote

My mistake. The statement has been amended here. What is your next issue, sir?

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sagitt12 t1_jbt4dnp wrote

This reminds me of the time in elementary school when we were on the topic of lava and the teacher said it kills. I asked if just a drop could kill a person and she said yes.

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danielravennest t1_jbt7cn8 wrote

It would give you a nasty burn, same as the heating element on a stove burner or toaster, which are about the same temperature.

The correct answer is "don't stand close to volcanic eruptions" because they can kill you in several ways (poison gases, heat, rock falls, etc.)

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monstrol t1_jbtfyt9 wrote

I have always believed that the most educated should teach the least educated. Just saying

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Binsky89 t1_jbqzpyb wrote

None of that suggests that melting permafrost poses a risk of viruses re-emerging.

I don't know what's involved in 'reviving' a virus, but it sounds like human intervention is required for it to happen.

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Darwins_Dog t1_jbr1h9v wrote

The only intervention was they had to isolate the viruses in order to be sure that they were the cause of infections in the amoeba cultures. That's what they mean by reviving. They isolated it, infected cells, which then infected other cells.

Most viruses don't have to be isolated to become infectious, and some are pretty good at crossing species.

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Binsky89 t1_jbrbxt2 wrote

That definitely changes things then.

I still have to wonder why the author chose to use the term revive in the context of a thing that wasn't alive in the first place (unless things have changed since my biology course in 08). I feel like thawing would be a much more accurate descriptor of the process.

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Morlik t1_jbt85u0 wrote

Revive doesn't necessarily refer to life or being alive. From Webster:

1 : to restore to consciousness or life

2 : to restore from a depressed, inactive, or unused state : bring back

3 : to renew in the mind or memory

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FallCheetah7373 t1_jbsxtpu wrote

yeah viruses are neither alive nor dead since the last time I dug deeper into the rabbit hole like 6 months ago it was a spiralling into the same answer over and over as per the top google posts and other html pages

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metalmaxilla t1_jbrckv4 wrote

Viruses themselves are not "alive". They exploit a living organism's machinery to cause the infection and have a way to replicate/spread. They simply have to come into contact with another organism with the right door they can get through. So if permafrost melts, it exposes the virus to either wind or water as a mode of transportation to get to living organisms... another way is the melting of its shield allows nearby organisms to come into contact with it.

Sounds like human intervention was needed to isolate samples and prove the hypothesis.

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S_A_N_D_ t1_jbrx7vt wrote

Viruses equally rely on their host for binding, cell entry, and replication.

The further we get from these viruses time wise, the less efficient it will likely be at the above.

I really hate these scare articles because there is very little to suggest these viruses actually pose a risk. There is however real risk from organisms that are currently co-evolving their virulence in tandem with us right now.

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Binsky89 t1_jbrf11d wrote

Yeah, OP explained what they meant by reviving.

I think it's an extremely poor choice of words for something that was never alive to begin with.

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metalmaxilla t1_jbriu02 wrote

It's a key nuance at the basis of the hypothesis that suggests there is a risk of re-emergence without deliberate intervention.

If melting permafrost uncovered intact virus, enabling a susceptible host to be exposed, then infection could theoretically happen.

That is the basis of the epidemiology triad of agent-host-environment.

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zyl0x t1_jbtlbab wrote

Viruses aren't even "alive" in the traditional sense outside of a host. They are inert until they come into contact with living cells. So presuming their cellular structure survived the freezing process itself, there's nothing special that needs to be done to "revive" frozen viruses besides introducing them to a host.

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