Good thing it was discovered frozen.
A team of French scientists discovered what they call the "frankenvirus," a 30,000-year-old giant virus frozen in Siberian permafrost.
Prior to the discovery of this new type of giant virus, researchers from Laboratoire Information Génomique et Structurale (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université), along with Laboratoire Biologie à Grande Echelle (CEA/Inserm/Université Joseph Fourier) and the Genoscope (CNRS/CEA) had isolated Pithovirus from the exact same sample of Siberian permafrost dating back to 30,000 years ago. From the discovery of the Pithovirus in 2014, the researchers preserved the study of the same frozen sample of soil from northeast of Siberia, and found the new virus called Mollivirus sibericum.
The Mollivirus bacterium was isolated, amplified and characterized by its French discoverers, with findings published online Sept. 8 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).
To characterize the virus, the researchers, for the first time, simultaneously used a combination of analytical techniques that are applicable to living beings, such as genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, and metagenomics.
According to the researchers, the virus is formed roughly into a sphere and is about 0.6 μm or 600 nm in length. It contains a genome of about 650,000 base pairs coding for over 500 proteins. Majority of these proteins do not resemble those of the Pithovirus, and unlike the virus' Siberian predecessor which multiplies through cryptoplasmic resources of its cellular host, the Mollivirus relies on the cell nucleus to multiply. This makes the virus host-dependent, like small viruses.
The researchers also found a lack of specific key enzymes that allow the synthesis of its DNA. This trait revealed that the Mollivirus sibericum resembles more of the common types of viruses, such as human pathogens like Adenovirus, Herpesvirus or Papillomavirus.
The scientists want to resurrect the 30,000-year-old giant virus; however, they noted that further assessments must be done to see if this would result in dangerous diseases to either humans or animals.
"A few particles that are still infectious may be enough, in the presence of a vulnerable host, to revive potentially pathogenic viruses," explained Jean-Michel Claverie, one of the study's lead researchers.
Claverie further warned people travelling to the region to seek natural resources such as oil to be more careful of these giant, prehistoric viruses, highlighting that industrializing such areas could revive viruses like small pox which most thought were eradicated.
Mollivirus sibericum is the second prehistoric virus discovered by the same team, and the fourth overall, since 2003.
