“I guess we’re lucky that Laptev didn’t make its debut earlier, given the conditions in that part of the world,” said Miquela.
Everyone in the group nodded grimly.
“The thing is,” said Drew, “the fact that this Laptev virus was there in the first place, and that it was able to make humans sick, is significant. It may be that the acidic ocean permeated the capsid and activated the virus, but if you gave ocean water to a virus that doesn’t generally affect humans, it’s not going to suddenly make someone sick. So, this Laptev virus most likely did see humans in the past.”
“And that’s what Tally was saying earlier, with the ancient humans chasing the mammoths around, right?” said Rhonda.
“Hold on,” said Angela. “Sorry, guys, I meant to ask earlier, but I just want to clarify. So if a virus has never made humans sick before, then it’s not a danger to us now?”
“Generally speaking, yes, that’s right,” said Sarah.
“But, I don’t get it,” said Angela. “It had to have started with one human in the first place, right? I mean, it’s the old chicken and the egg problem. So why are you all so sure that Laptev had to have infected people in the past?”
“You can think of it as a numbers game,” said Rhonda, her deep voice commanding the attention of everyone in the room. “With the way the workers got sick, you know, so many within a few hours of touching the ice, it makes it extremely unlikely that the virus had not seen a human host before. As we were saying earlier, viruses aren’t active aggressors. They need the ‘key’ to get inside the locked door of the cell membrane in the first place. If Laptev had never seen humans, then it would not have been able to ‘unlock’ human cells so quickly and make so many people sick. The fact that Laptev was so virulent so quickly is proof that it must have already known how to infect humans.”
Angela looked doubtful.
“You know how once you’ve solved a tricky puzzle you’re more likely to get it right faster the next time you see it?” asked Miquela, blushing slightly.
“Sure, the whole ‘key’ thing,” said Angela. “But I still don’t think it makes sense.”
“Okay, so then let’s take it to a higher level,” she said, turning redder with each word. “If you have a team trying to go through an obstacle course, and they get to a series of puzzles that only one person knows how to solve, it’s going to take a while for that person to work with all the members of the team to show them how to solve it. But if the team has a bunch of people who have all seen that type of puzzle before, they’re going to resolve it quicker.”
“Got it,” said Angela, smiling.
Tally picked up the thread of the conversation again. “So, that raised another question which was: where did the virus come from in the first place, meaning, how did it get in the ice? It’s a pretty aggressive pathogen, so it probably did not exist in all human populations. Otherwise they would have all been decimated or perhaps we would have evolved with the virus and over the years, built up more immunity. So it makes sense that the Laptev was probably somehow more localized to that area. It’s a bit of long shot, but here’s what we came up with. We can assume that the early people who were in the area were probably taken ill with the virus. That pretty much has to be a given or otherwise there’s no explanation for how the virus would suddenly become so toxic to humans. But, where did these early people get it from?”
“That’s my question exactly,” said Angela, pointing a finger at Tally.
“When we explained about the mammoths migrating through the Laptev Bay area last week, we guessed that this theory was probably right and these early people were likely following them, hunting for food. Many tribes of nomads did that, so it makes a lot of sense. So it occurred to us that maybe the mammoths were carrying the virus, and perhaps when the prehistoric people killed the giant animals to eat them, they became infected in turn. And that’s when Drew had a brilliant idea.”
“I don’t know about brilliant,” said Drew, blushing slightly. “I just wondered if modern Asian elephants might also be carriers of the virus, you know, since they are the living species that is most closely related to the mammoth. I wasn’t sure if anyone had ever looked at those elephants that way. I mean, especially if the virus was silent, then perhaps it could have been present in the elephant’s tissues and no one would have noticed it.”
“Perhaps.” said Rhonda, placing the tips of her fingers on her chin pensively. “It seems a reasonable thing to take a look at.”
“So we contacted an elephant reserve in northern Asia,” said Tally.
“I have a friend who speaks Cantonese and she translated for us,” said Drew.
“And they sent us some tissue samples from several different animals, old and young,” concluded Tally.
Sarah was glad that these two were sitting next to one another or it would have been like watching a tennis match, having to keep swiveling her head between the speakers. As it was, she only had to flick her eyes back and forth.
“Well?” said Rhonda, obviously barely able to contain herself. “What did you find? Are they carriers?”
Sarah realized that if the elephants were found to carry the virus, this would be a tremendously important breakthrough. Prior to the recent macabre discovery that the Laptev virus had the ability to infect humans, there were no documented cases of Megaviridae affecting anything larger than an amoeba. Indeed, it was only in the last ten years that giant viruses had been discovered, all in remote locations of the planet, and she did not know if anyone had ever searched for them inside animal cells.
Sarah thought about Asian elephants for a moment. What did she know about them? Human efforts were largely centered on trying to protect them from poachers who supplied profligate wealthy avarices who had an insatiable appetite for ivory. Thus these large mammals were on the verge of extinction. But how much was known about their physiology? Could it be that these pachyderms carried a hidden stowaway? Might they harbor a large, hitherto obscure virus, a vestige from their furrier ancestors? It would certainly be an interesting twist.
Tally grimaced and said, “No, unfortunately the Asian elephants do not appear to be carrying the virus.”
Sarah let out a breath that she didn’t realize she had been holding, and closed her eyes. It was another dead end.
“Furthermore, when we cultured the Asian elephant cells and introduced the virus, it did not seem to parasitize the cells the way we would have expected,” Drew said. “The tests aren’t conclusive yet, of course, but our initial trials seem to indicate that the virus enters the cells and integrates into the chromosomal DNA, but does not produce an outright infection. Instead it just kind of rides along, not growing, and not bothering the cells.”
“A latent virus,” said Emile.
“Maybe that’s how it infected the humans,” added Miquela, who was also being carried away with the excitement of the conversation. “Maybe the virus was just hanging out in the woolly mammoths and then when the humans killed it, they became contaminated.”
“Well, I hesitate to agree,” said Drew, running his long fingers through his hair. “My understanding is that even latent viruses do, at some point, become active and virulent. And maybe Laptev viruses in the elephant cells will eventually become virulent as well, under conditions we have yet to assess, but for now, the virus just behaves itself, staying put and not giving the elephant cells any reason to fear it.”