If paleovirology is experiencing unprecedented progress these days, it is partly thanks to the melting of permafrost. This frozen layer of the ground does indeed contain animal, plant and human remains that are thousands, even millions of years old. Aware of the challenges in this field, the Russian authorities, through the Vektor National Research Center, have just unveiled a new project which aims to analyze animal specimens from the permafrost in Russia, but also from other countries.
Located in Siberia, in the Novosibirsk region, the premises of the Vektor laboratory were once (in Soviet times) a center for the development of biological weapons. It is currently one of the few facilities that still have samples of the smallpox virus. The center has even created a vaccine against Covid-19, which is awaiting validation by the Russian health authorities.
Soft tissue analysis
Through its new mission, the Vektor center, in partnership with the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk, in Central Siberia, will have the task of searching for prehistoric viruses. The aim is not only to determine the evolution of the latter, but also to lay the foundations for the Kremlin’s paleovirology program. To do this, the team will take samples from the corpses of prehistoric animals.
The samples (soft tissue or from carcasses) are then placed in a test tube before being studied according to classical molecular biology methods. This step consists in particular in isolating the nucleic acids and carrying out the sequencing of the genome.
A horse over 4000 years old
According to Olesya Okhlopkova, researcher at the Vektor Science Center, this technique provides data on the composition of nucleic acids and understand how it has evolved over time. Note that a first study has already been carried out. Many photos are available on this page.
It consisted in analyzing the soft tissues of the cheval Verkhoyansk whose remains were found in 2009 and preserved at the Mammoth Museum. The 4,450-year-old corpse has helped determine the origin of the modern Yakut horse. Indeed, the researchers managed to completely decipher the nuclear genome. Of course, they will not stop there.
Lots of animals to study
Other animals that lived in the time of the mammoths will then be studied. Among them are the Omoloy elk, Malolyakhovsky mammoth, Tumat dogs, rodents, hares and many more. “Only bacteriological studies have been done on these species, we are conducting research on paleoviruses for the first time”, told Maxim Cheprasov, head of the Mammoth Museum laboratory, at NEFU.
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