MyBGSUBGSU EmailSearchAcademicsAdmissionsThe ArtsAthleticsLibraryA to Z LinksBowling Green State UniversityDo melting glaciers hold medical threats?
BOWLING GREEN, O.—“Recycling” is a term generally associated with positive environmental change. But that’s not so when you
are talking about the recycling of ancient genomes rather than aluminum cans and plastic containers, according to Dr. Scott
Rogers, chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Bowling Green State University.
Over the past several years, Rogers and his scientific team have recovered hundreds of viable bacterial and fungal isolates from ancient ice and permafrost. That got them to thinking: What if the frozen depths of glaciers, ice sheets and lakes are harboring viral pathogens that the immune systems of extant animals have never seen before?
Expanding on this imaginative concept in two papers recently published in the journal Medical Hypotheses, they contend the release of these infectious agents from the world's rapidly melting ice stores poses a grave new medical threat.
Since storage in ice does not destroy viruses, once released from captivity they enter the common pool in which many infectious agents exchange genetic information. Scientists believe this mixing of ancient and modern strains provides both the raw material and the opportunity for the creation of unique, virulent combinations.
What would we expect to see if this scenario is plausible?
Rogers says pathogens affecting a broad taxonomic spectrum of far-ranging hosts would emerge at sporadic intervals in disparate species and locations.
“This pattern might be reflected generally in the increasing number of emerging infectious diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and West Nile virus. It is precisely what researchers see with a little-known group called the Caliciviruses that use ocean fish and mammals—including humans—as a reservoir and cause disease in a large variety of organs,” according to the Bowling Green biologist.
Alarming as that specter is, the potentially more insidious threat comes from viruses that are demonstrably dangerous to human health, such as influenza and enteroviruses, which infect the gastrointestinal tract and cause diseases of the nervous system. Such genome recycling may yet thwart our most ambitious plans for the eradication of old foes such as polio, Rogers notes.
Direct evidence of genome recycling is currently lacking, but that doesn't mean it is not to be found on the very next plate examined. That is what motivates Rogers and his team. They call “at the very least” for surveillance efforts to determine the quantities of pathogens contained in environmental ice and released annually into the environment.
Rogers co-edited the recent book “Life in Ancient Ice,” published by Princeton University Press. Based on a National Science Foundation-sponsored symposium he and co-editor John D. Castello of the State University of New York organized in 2001, the book comprises 20 chapters by some of the world’s leading experts on microbial life in glaciers and permafrost. Rogers and Castello also review key discoveries and outline important areas for future research.
Over the past several years, Rogers and his scientific team have recovered hundreds of viable bacterial and fungal isolates from ancient ice and permafrost. That got them to thinking: What if the frozen depths of glaciers, ice sheets and lakes are harboring viral pathogens that the immune systems of extant animals have never seen before?
Expanding on this imaginative concept in two papers recently published in the journal Medical Hypotheses, they contend the release of these infectious agents from the world's rapidly melting ice stores poses a grave new medical threat.
Since storage in ice does not destroy viruses, once released from captivity they enter the common pool in which many infectious agents exchange genetic information. Scientists believe this mixing of ancient and modern strains provides both the raw material and the opportunity for the creation of unique, virulent combinations.
What would we expect to see if this scenario is plausible?
Rogers says pathogens affecting a broad taxonomic spectrum of far-ranging hosts would emerge at sporadic intervals in disparate species and locations.
“This pattern might be reflected generally in the increasing number of emerging infectious diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and West Nile virus. It is precisely what researchers see with a little-known group called the Caliciviruses that use ocean fish and mammals—including humans—as a reservoir and cause disease in a large variety of organs,” according to the Bowling Green biologist.
Alarming as that specter is, the potentially more insidious threat comes from viruses that are demonstrably dangerous to human health, such as influenza and enteroviruses, which infect the gastrointestinal tract and cause diseases of the nervous system. Such genome recycling may yet thwart our most ambitious plans for the eradication of old foes such as polio, Rogers notes.
Direct evidence of genome recycling is currently lacking, but that doesn't mean it is not to be found on the very next plate examined. That is what motivates Rogers and his team. They call “at the very least” for surveillance efforts to determine the quantities of pathogens contained in environmental ice and released annually into the environment.
Rogers co-edited the recent book “Life in Ancient Ice,” published by Princeton University Press. Based on a National Science Foundation-sponsored symposium he and co-editor John D. Castello of the State University of New York organized in 2001, the book comprises 20 chapters by some of the world’s leading experts on microbial life in glaciers and permafrost. Rogers and Castello also review key discoveries and outline important areas for future research.
(Posted February 07, 2005)