The Coronavirus pandemic let us know that there are millions of viruses throughout the world that we are nothing near understanding, and we are more afraid of them than we were a couple of years ago.
So the recent discovery of these 33 new kinds of viruses found in the Tibetan plateau in China was something that shocked all scientists in the world. These are not only unknown viruses that look nothing like the ones we struggle with today but also are about 15.000 years old.
A research team from the Ohio State University were the lucky people who made a great input to modern biology, while they were studying the Guliya glacier that is almost 23 thousand feet high above the sea.
This amazing discovery was described and published by Microbiome magazine, where all the risks and characteristics of the microorganisms are explained. Something special about these germs is that they were prepared for living in extreme environments, such as the glacier where they were found, and this would explain how they have survived for all those years.
Apparently, they are unlikely to harm humans as badly, because the scientists believe these were born on the flora of the area rather than animals or people, but they still are treating them very carefully and with special techniques that would avoid the spreading of the viruses along with preserving them.
As we mentioned before, the genetic codes for these viruses were totally unknown before their discovery, only 5 of them have been seen before. They believe that they were part of the atmosphere when the glacier was formed thanks to the movement of dust and gases and have been there since.
Even though this discovery is a great step for the scientific community, it also supposes one of the consequences of climate change, since they have been trapped and frozen over the ice of the glacier for centuries ago and now because of it melting they are seeing the light of day again.
These new germs are a great tool for the study of the behavior of viruses over the years and the changes of the ecosystem where they were found, but they also could be a threat if they were released into the environment without understanding them.
Of course, this discovery is an example of how many regions of the world are still undiscovered, so this opened a bigger interest in the scientists to study similar locations that are holding millions of secrets and forgotten aspects of the planet.