New, Unknown Viruses Found in Antarctica's Ancient Lakes

www.dailygalaxy.com...

Quote from source:
Like a modern, micro version of The Thing, Antarctica's icy lakes have been discovered to house a surprisingly diverse community of viruses, including some that were previously unidentified. The finding could shed light on whether microbial life evolved independently in Antarctica, which has been isolated for millions of years, or they were introduced there more recently.

Some of these lakes which are frozen nine months of the year, have little animal life and are dominated by microorganisms, including algae, bacteria, protozoans and viruses. A virus is little more than a package of DNA surrounded by a capsule structure. To survive, viruses must hijack, or infect, living cells and use the host's equipment to replicate.

Antonio Alcami, a researcher from the Spanish Research Council and his colleagues analyzed DNA from viruses found in water samples collected from Antarctica's Lake Limnopolar, a surface lake on Livingston Island. They found nearly 10,000 species, including some small DNA viruses that had never before been identified. In total, the viruses were from 12 different families, some of which may be completely new to science, the researchers suggest.

PPPFFFTTT! People say science is dead and we already know too much. I doubt it.

We have yet to explore most of the Earth and when we look in places we have not studied before we find amazing things.

Everyone and anyone should be out there studying so maybe we could figure out our place in the universe a bit quicker.

Anyways I looked around and could not find this posted on here so if it is my apologies.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

Cool, great find, OP.

They say that there are [insert some astronomical number here] unknown types of viruses within the Amazon rainforest that humans have never come into contact with before. Eventually we will encounter these new (to humans, that is) viruses as we continue to eat into the rainforest. It has been speculated that statistically speaking, its quite likely that at least one of these viruses will spark a deadly global epidemic, as we unwittingly extract it from where it slumbers and expose it to the rest of the world.

[edit on 6/8/10 by silent thunder]

I bet you this is just the tip of the iceberg!

Antarctica holds so many secrets.

I really wish there were serious concerted efforts to study the location better. A few international teams just doesn't cut it for me.

I would like to see a contingent of 10,000+ scientists go down there tomorrow.

Who knows what kind of dino skeletons or whatever you could find up there. I really really want to know!

I wonder what sort of practical applications there could be for these microbe organism? I really hope they don't get used to develop Monsanto's latest Terminator creature!!!
Due to Osmosis most fresh water, microbes die (fresh water leave's their cell-s) when exposed to salt water (like the sea). But if some ancient salt water ice was frozen, then I guess there's a chance that a "extinct" a species destructive in today's Earth-climate, could do harm. Thankfully most (ancient) melting, ice, is fresh water.

So as silent thunder predicts: We're far more likely to bump into this Rainforests. Personally I think if we did, it would probably only be because it serves the human species right. Till then it looks like another 30 percent of the world's species will go extinct in next 30 years (again!)
www.novinite.com...

Pandoras box awaits us as the ice melts. How exciting!

Quote from source:
They found nearly 10,000 species, including some small DNA viruses that had never before been identified. In total, the viruses were from 12 different families, some of which may be completely new to science, the researchers suggest.

Can you say ... biological weapons?