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Microbes trapped in permafrost awake after thousands of years (phys.org)

submitted 1 day ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/science@mander.xyz

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In a new study, a team of geologists and biologists led by CU Boulder resurrected ancient microbes that had been trapped in ice—in some cases for around 40,000 years.

The study is a showcase of the planet's permafrost. That's the name for a frozen mix of soil, ice and rocks that underlies nearly a quarter of the land in the northern hemisphere. It's an icy graveyard where animal and plant remains, alongside plentiful bacteria and other microorganisms, have become stuck in time.

That is, until curious scientists try to wake them up.

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[–] misk@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago

Humans aren’t that homogeneous when it comes to immunity though.

When Europeans colonised Americas they brought germs that decimated Indians. There’s plenty of evidence that similar thing happened in Europe too when Yamnaya / Corded Ware culture expanded because they replaced existing people very quickly and without much violence which also coincides with burial sites teeming with black plague but I digress.

You also have to account for unused immunity being possibly eroded with time because there’s no evolutionary pressure. This is why we need to be mindful about vitamins for example - we got used to them being available in the environment and our bodies can no longer synthesise them. Dormant functionality isn’t guaranteed to carry over through millennia.

40k years ago is also when last Sapiens and Neanderthal admixture happened which was a bit of big thing for our immune systems to give a sense of scale here.