Meet the Giant Virus that Turns its Hosts to Stone

In 2019, a scientist made a concerning discovery in a Japanese hot spring. When a virologist from the Tokyo University of Science examined mud from the hot spring, he found a giant virus with a peculiar killing power – the ability to turn its hosts to stone. He promptly named it Medusavirus.

The good news for humans is that the mysterious Medusavirus seems to only infect single-celled organisms called amoebas. But that’s terrible news if you’re an amoeba. The virus causes some infected amoeba cells to burst open, while others shrivel and harden into a stone-like cyst.

Here’s where it gets a little more scary for humans. Medusavirus is only one virus in a series of ancient ‘giant viruses’ that scientists have discovered in recent years.

Giant viruses are real

So what is a giant virus? For starters, they are much larger and more complex than typical viruses.

While regular viruses are tiny and can only be seen using powerful microscopes, giant viruses are large enough to be visible under an ordinary light microscope.

Giant viruses also have a more complex structure and contain a larger number of genes than regular viruses. And they are fascinating to scientists because they challenge our understanding of viruses and their role in the natural world with unique characteristics that blur the lines between viruses and living organisms.

Giant, but not (very) dangerous

It all began back in 2003 when scientists discovered the first giant virus lurking in a water sample from a hospital cooling tower in England. Now know as Mimivirus, it can infect humans and may cause some forms of pneumonia.

Then, in 2010, scientists isolated another giant virus – Megavirus – this time from a water sample collected off the coast of Chile. Four years later, scientists revived Pithovirus, yet another giant virus that had been buried in Siberian ice for 30,000 years. Oh, and don’t forget the giant Klosneuvirus. It was found in an Austrian sewage plant in 2017.

Thankfully, all these giant viruses – with the exception of Mimivirus – appear to only infect amoebas, which scientists believe makes them harmless to humans. But don’t rest too easily, because scientists also believe there are many more ancient viruses preserved in the deep freeze of the Siberian permafrost.

The permafrost problem

Some of those may be released sooner than we might like. Siberia is warming at about four times the global average, which means climate change is rapidly defrosting vast areas of permafrost – and thawing ancient viruses that were previously frozen within it.

European researches have already found more than a dozen ancient viruses in the thawed Siberian permafrost, including one that’s thought to be around 48,500 years old. While these also appear to only infect amoebas, concern levels remain high.

That’s because scientists believe that viruses unlocked from the permafrost in years to come could prove to be much more dangerous for humans. While coronaviruses that cause Covid-19 are quite fragile and less likely to survive the deep freeze, other pandemic-level virus could.

Death from below

It’s believed that smallpox, for example, could live through long-term freezing, and may still exist in the frozen corpses of smallpox victims buried in the permafrost. Scientists believe there is a risk that if a smallpox-containing corpse was revealed in the melting permafrost, the surviving virus could infect passing animals – and humans.

But we don’t really need to rely on hypotheticals here, because the thawing permafrost has already released a terrifying killer.

In the summer of 2016, abnormally high ambient temperatures in the Yamal Peninsula thawed the permafrost so much that Bacillus Anthracis spores were exposed to the surface. This caused a deadly Anthrax outbreak that infected 2,650 reindeer and dozens of humans.

This is all just another potentially fatal consequence of climate change – and another pretty compelling reason to support drastic action in the fight against global warming.

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