• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Strange Giant Viruses Found Lurking On Greenland Ice Sheet

June 5, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Lurking in the snow and frost of Greenland’s ice sheet, mysterious giant viruses has been discovered. They share the ice with an abundance of algae, which means this is the first time these viruses – about which we know relatively little – have been found in such a habitat. But it’s not bad news (unless you’re an alga): it is thought that by infecting microalgae, the giant viruses may act as some sort of secret weapon in minimizing melt.

Advertisement

Just how giant are we talking? The viruses can’t be seen with the naked eye, but next to your regular viruses (which measure 20-200 nanometers) they’re comparatively massive. Giant viruses can grow to 2.5 micrometers – that’s 2,500 nanometers – making them up to 125 times bigger than normal viruses, and larger than most bacteria. They also have humongous genomes, containing around 2.5 million base pairs.

Advertisement

Previously, giant viruses have been found lingering in all sorts of environments, including the sea, soil, and even in humans. However, this latest discovery marks the very first time they’ve been found on surface ice and snow that is teeming with microalgae.

Here, the team behind the discovery believes, they could have an important role to play in regulating algal blooms and, consequently, in safeguarding the ice from accelerated melting. 

When Arctic algae flourish in the spring, it darkens large swathes of the ice sheet, limiting its ability to reflect sunlight, in turn heightening the melt. This is bad news for the environment, which is why the freshly discovered giant viruses would be such a boon for protecting the ice if they can act as a natural algae control as the researchers suspect. 

“We don’t know a lot about the viruses, but I think they could be useful as a way of alleviating ice melting caused by algal blooms,” first author Laura Perini from the Department of Environmental Science at Aarhus University said in a statement. “How specific they are and how efficient it would be, we do not know yet. But by exploring them further, we hope to answer some of those questions.”

Advertisement

The team collected samples from a variety of snow and ice habitats in the Greenland ice sheet, including dark ice, ice cores, red and green snow, and melting holes (cryoconite), before analyzing them for DNA and searching for specific giant virus marker genes. In almost all samples, they found sequences matching known giant viruses.

Sample of melted ice from Greenland ice sheet containing algae and giant viruses

That’s not dirty water, it’s actually a sample teeming with microorganisms, including algae and giant viruses.

Image credit: Laura Perini

To make sure these had come from active viruses and not long-dead microbes, the researchers also extracted messenger RNA, or mRNA – a single-stranded molecule that contains the instructions from DNA that direct cells to make a protein – from the samples. 

“In the total mRNA sequenced from the samples, we found the same markers as in the total DNA, so we know they have been transcribed,” Perini explained. “It means that the viruses are living and active on the ice.”

Your bog-standard viruses are not capable of transcribing double-stranded DNA into single-stranded mRNA. Instead, they have free-floating RNA strands in their cells that are activated when the virus infects its host and makes use of its machinery. But giant viruses are different. They are able to repair, replicate, transcribe, and translate DNA without the help of a host – although why that is, we’re not sure.

Advertisement

When it comes to giant viruses, there are plenty of other unknowns. What do these mysterious microbes infect, for example?

“Some of them may be infecting protists while others attack the snow algae. We simply can’t be sure yet,” added Perini.

But with further research, she hopes, we may better understand these pathogens and their potential role in protecting the ice from algae-accelerated melt.

The study is published in the journal Microbiome.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-NZ players reach Dubai after ‘specific, credible threat’ derailed Pakistan tour
  2. Soccer-Liverpool’s Alexander-Arnold ruled out of Man City game
  3. What Are Baby Platypuses Called?
  4. Should You Wash Chicken Before Cooking It?

Source Link: Strange Giant Viruses Found Lurking On Greenland Ice Sheet

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Magnetic Flip Seen Around First Photographed Black Hole Pushes “Models To The Limit”
  • Something Out Of Nothing: New Approach Mimics Matter Creation Using Superfluid Helium
  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • How To Watch The “Awkward” Partial Solar Eclipse This Weekend
  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version