He Tianliang, Zhang Xinyi, Zhang Xiaobo
College of Animal Science and Technology, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, People's Republic of China.
College of Life Sciences, Laboratory for Marine Biology and Biotechnology of Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, People's Republic of China.
J Adv Res. 2025 Mar 31. doi: 10.1016/j.jare.2025.03.057.
In the last two decades, outbreaks of pathogenic viruses have led to significant human mortality and economic repercussions. Despite extensive investigations into tracing these viruses in terrestrial environments, their origins remain enigmatic.
The Earth's biosphere encompasses both sunlight-dependent terrestrial and surface ocean ecosystems, as well as the sunlight-independent deep-sea ecosystem. However, the traceability of human pathogenic viruses in the deep sea has not been thoroughly explored. This study aimed to investigate the presence of human pathogenic viruses in the deep sea.
In this study, we performed a viral metagenomic analysis using a global deep-sea sediment virome 2.0 dataset which contained 159 deep-sea sediment samples with geologic ages from 2,500 to 7,750 years.
A total of 554,664 viral operational taxonomic units (vOTUs) were identified and further obtained 2,254 potential pathogenic viruses of vertebrates. Among them, 23 vOTUs exhibited high homology with 12 species of human pathogenic viruses which belonged to 4 viral families. Notably, variola virus, the first human pathogenic virus eradicated from humans and now only found in laboratories, was discovered in the ancient deep-sea sediments. The evolution analysis showed that these DNA viruses might represent the ancestors or variants of human pathogenic viruses, suggesting that the deep sea could be a crucial reservoir for human pathogenic viruses.
Our findings present all the ancient pathogenic DNA viruses of humans found in the deep sea for the first time, highlighting the source of the future epidemics. It is imperative to implement the stringent virus monitoring and management measures for human activities in marine environments to address the emerging challenges of marine biosecurity and promote sustainable use of oceans.
在过去二十年中，致病性病毒的爆发已导致大量人员死亡和经济影响。尽管对在陆地环境中追踪这些病毒进行了广泛调查，但其起源仍然成谜。
地球生物圈包括依赖阳光的陆地和海洋表层生态系统，以及不依赖阳光的深海生态系统。然而，人类致病性病毒在深海中的可追溯性尚未得到充分探索。本研究旨在调查深海中人类致病性病毒的存在情况。
在本研究中，我们使用全球深海沉积物病毒宏基因组2.0数据集进行了病毒宏基因组分析，该数据集包含159个地质年代从2500年到7750年的深海沉积物样本。
共鉴定出554,664个病毒操作分类单元（vOTU），并进一步获得了2254种潜在的脊椎动物致病性病毒。其中，23个vOTU与属于4个病毒科的12种人类致病性病毒表现出高度同源性。值得注意的是，在古代深海沉积物中发现了天花病毒，这是第一种从人类中根除的人类致病性病毒，现在仅在实验室中发现。进化分析表明，这些DNA病毒可能代表人类致病性病毒的祖先或变体，这表明深海可能是人类致病性病毒的重要储存库。
我们的研究结果首次展示了在深海中发现的所有古老的人类致病性DNA病毒，突出了未来疫情的源头。必须对海洋环境中的人类活动实施严格的病毒监测和管理措施，以应对海洋生物安全的新挑战，并促进海洋的可持续利用。
