Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities
Permafrost thawing and the potential 'lab leak' of ancient microorganisms generate risks of biological invasions for today's ecological communities, including threats to human health via exposure to emergent pathogens. Whether and how such 'time-travelling' invaders could es...
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ftunivhelsihelda:oai:helda.helsinki.fi:10138/563908 2024-05-19T07:41:53+00:00 Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities Strona, Giovanni Bradshaw, Corey J. A. Cardoso, Pedro Gotelli, Nicholas J. Guillaume, Frédéric Manca, Federica Mustonen, Ville Zaman, Luis Ecological Data Science (Former group) Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences Finnish Museum of Natural History Zoology Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Programme Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics Helsinki Institute for Information Technology Bioinformatics Institute of Biotechnology Department of Computer Science 2023-08-10T10:01:05Z 24 application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/10138/563908 eng eng PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011268 Strona , G , Bradshaw , C J A , Cardoso , P , Gotelli , N J , Guillaume , F , Manca , F , Mustonen , V & Zaman , L 2023 , ' Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities ' , PLoS Computational Biology , vol. 19 , no. 7 , e1011268 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011268 ORCID: /0000-0001-8119-9960/work/140317486 ORCID: /0000-0002-7270-1792/work/140318207 ORCID: /0000-0003-2294-4013/work/140318550 ORCID: /0000-0003-0874-0081/work/140318678 http://hdl.handle.net/10138/563908 9a3a9f5b-e469-4e9b-85fc-e9002eba4aa3 37498846 85165897147 001041500800003 cc_by info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess openAccess 1181 Ecology evolutionary biology 11832 Microbiology and virology Article publishedVersion 2023 ftunivhelsihelda 2024-04-23T23:58:07Z Permafrost thawing and the potential 'lab leak' of ancient microorganisms generate risks of biological invasions for today's ecological communities, including threats to human health via exposure to emergent pathogens. Whether and how such 'time-travelling' invaders could establish in modern communities is unclear, and existing data are too scarce to test hypotheses. To quantify the risks of time-travelling invasions, we isolated digital virus-like pathogens from the past records of coevolved artificial life communities and studied their simulated invasion into future states of the community. We then investigated how invasions affected diversity of the free-living bacteria-like organisms (i.e., hosts) in recipient communities compared to controls where no invasion occurred (and control invasions of contemporary pathogens). Invading pathogens could often survive and continue evolving, and in a few cases (3.1%) became exceptionally dominant in the invaded community. Even so, invaders often had negligible effects on the invaded community composition; however, in a few, highly unpredictable cases (1.1%), invaders precipitated either substantial losses (up to -32%) or gains (up to +12%) in the total richness of free-living species compared to controls. Given the sheer abundance of ancient microorganisms regularly released into modern communities, such a low probability of outbreak events still presents substantial risks. Our findings therefore suggest that unpredictable threats so far confined to science fiction and conjecture could in fact be powerful drivers of ecological change.Author summaryThe idea that ancient pathogens trapped in ice or hidden in remote laboratory facilities could break free-usually with catastrophic consequences for human beings-has been a fruitful source of inspiration for generations of science fiction novelists and screenwriters. However, the unprecedented rates of melting of glaciers and permafrost are now giving many types of ice-dormant microorganisms concrete opportunities to ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Ice permafrost HELDA – University of Helsinki Open Repository PLOS Computational Biology 19 7 e1011268 |
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Open Polar |
collection |
HELDA – University of Helsinki Open Repository |
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ftunivhelsihelda |
language |
English |
topic |
1181 Ecology evolutionary biology 11832 Microbiology and virology |
spellingShingle |
1181 Ecology evolutionary biology 11832 Microbiology and virology Strona, Giovanni Bradshaw, Corey J. A. Cardoso, Pedro Gotelli, Nicholas J. Guillaume, Frédéric Manca, Federica Mustonen, Ville Zaman, Luis Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities |
topic_facet |
1181 Ecology evolutionary biology 11832 Microbiology and virology |
description |
Permafrost thawing and the potential 'lab leak' of ancient microorganisms generate risks of biological invasions for today's ecological communities, including threats to human health via exposure to emergent pathogens. Whether and how such 'time-travelling' invaders could establish in modern communities is unclear, and existing data are too scarce to test hypotheses. To quantify the risks of time-travelling invasions, we isolated digital virus-like pathogens from the past records of coevolved artificial life communities and studied their simulated invasion into future states of the community. We then investigated how invasions affected diversity of the free-living bacteria-like organisms (i.e., hosts) in recipient communities compared to controls where no invasion occurred (and control invasions of contemporary pathogens). Invading pathogens could often survive and continue evolving, and in a few cases (3.1%) became exceptionally dominant in the invaded community. Even so, invaders often had negligible effects on the invaded community composition; however, in a few, highly unpredictable cases (1.1%), invaders precipitated either substantial losses (up to -32%) or gains (up to +12%) in the total richness of free-living species compared to controls. Given the sheer abundance of ancient microorganisms regularly released into modern communities, such a low probability of outbreak events still presents substantial risks. Our findings therefore suggest that unpredictable threats so far confined to science fiction and conjecture could in fact be powerful drivers of ecological change.Author summaryThe idea that ancient pathogens trapped in ice or hidden in remote laboratory facilities could break free-usually with catastrophic consequences for human beings-has been a fruitful source of inspiration for generations of science fiction novelists and screenwriters. However, the unprecedented rates of melting of glaciers and permafrost are now giving many types of ice-dormant microorganisms concrete opportunities to ... |
author2 |
Ecological Data Science (Former group) Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences Finnish Museum of Natural History Zoology Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Programme Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics Helsinki Institute for Information Technology Bioinformatics Institute of Biotechnology Department of Computer Science |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Strona, Giovanni Bradshaw, Corey J. A. Cardoso, Pedro Gotelli, Nicholas J. Guillaume, Frédéric Manca, Federica Mustonen, Ville Zaman, Luis |
author_facet |
Strona, Giovanni Bradshaw, Corey J. A. Cardoso, Pedro Gotelli, Nicholas J. Guillaume, Frédéric Manca, Federica Mustonen, Ville Zaman, Luis |
author_sort |
Strona, Giovanni |
title |
Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities |
title_short |
Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities |
title_full |
Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities |
title_fullStr |
Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities |
title_full_unstemmed |
Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities |
title_sort |
time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities |
publisher |
PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10138/563908 |
genre |
Ice permafrost |
genre_facet |
Ice permafrost |
op_relation |
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011268 Strona , G , Bradshaw , C J A , Cardoso , P , Gotelli , N J , Guillaume , F , Manca , F , Mustonen , V & Zaman , L 2023 , ' Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities ' , PLoS Computational Biology , vol. 19 , no. 7 , e1011268 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011268 ORCID: /0000-0001-8119-9960/work/140317486 ORCID: /0000-0002-7270-1792/work/140318207 ORCID: /0000-0003-2294-4013/work/140318550 ORCID: /0000-0003-0874-0081/work/140318678 http://hdl.handle.net/10138/563908 9a3a9f5b-e469-4e9b-85fc-e9002eba4aa3 37498846 85165897147 001041500800003 |
op_rights |
cc_by info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess openAccess |
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PLOS Computational Biology |
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19 |
container_issue |
7 |
container_start_page |
e1011268 |
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