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Updated: Jun 5, 2025

Single Cell Micro-aspiration as an Alternative Strategy to Fluorescence-activated Cell Sorting for Giant Virus Mixture Separation
Published on: October 27, 2019
Revitalized abyssal ancient viruses trigger viral pandemic in terrestrial soil
Xumei Sun1, Xinyi Zhang2, Xiaobo Zhang2
1College of Life Sciences, Laboratory for Marine Biology and Biotechnology of Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao) and Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, People's Republic of China; School of Marine Sciences, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Viruses are the most abundant biological entities on the earth. Some ancient viruses can revive from permafrost along with melting to infect the current hosts. The "zombie viruses" trapped in the ancient deep-sea sediments become the public health concern due to the environmental changes and human activities in deep oceans. However, the biosecurity risk of benthic viruses has not been explored. Here, two viruses purified from the ancient deep-sea sediments were infectious to the bacteria of terrestrial soil. Furthermore, the benthic viruses were purified from each of 106 deep-sea sediments with 1,900-17,300 years old and then the biothreats of deep-sea viruses to terrestrial soil were evaluated on a global scale. The results revealed that the viruses purified from each of 9 sediments could disturb the native bacterial communities in soil and destroy the soil functions. These viruses with the capacity to invade soil were widely distributed in the abyssal sea. Therefore, our findings highlighted the revitalized risks of deep-sea ancient viruses to terrestrial soil ecosystems for the first time. The biosecurity of deep-sea viruses to terrestrial soil should be assessed before performing deep-sea mining and scientific activities.
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