The Laptev Virus

“I remember reading about those megaviruses in one of my graduate virology classes last year, but I thought that they only infected amoebas,” said Miquela, bringing the team back to the subject. Miquela spoke softly and clearly, though she always seemed a bit intimidated, often crossing her arms over her chest as she spoke. Sarah thought of her as the more mature of the two post-docs. She and Shane were about the same age, but Miquela, with her quiet manner and her dark-framed glasses, seemed much more poised and focused on her work.

“That is a question that a good epidemiologist would pose,” replied Sarah, beaming at Miquela. “According to Rhonda, the reason researchers thought that it only infected amoebas was because they only provided amoebas as host cells to draw the huge viruses out in the first place. However, the Laptev virus, like several of the other Megaviridae, most likely contains genes for over 2,500 proteins. It is the largest megavirus ever found, and as our bad luck would have it, some of those genes allow it to enter and infect human cells.”

“But, what’s the mode of transmission? It can’t just jump from amoebas into people,” said Tally.

“That’s one of the questions that researchers haven’t quite resolved yet, and one of the first ones we will have to address,” Sarah said with a sigh. Rhonda had provided her with a dossier of reports from Riesigoil and in the hours between her meeting with Rhonda and this one with her team, Sarah had skimmed through all of them. Then she had used her university ID to access the world’s leading scientific research sites so that she could read up on Megaviridae in general. Most of the scientific information nowadays was inaccessible to the average internet user and required steep subscription prices to even begin searching the sites. Universities spent a lot of money each year to be able to provide access to this information for their researchers.

Sarah’s strong foundation in virology, as well as her extensive experience made it easy for her to assimilate a substantial quantity of information in a short period of time and organize it in her mind.

“I heard that the Soviets used to send old submarines full of nuclear waste up to the North Pole and then sink them there, under the ice, and just leave them. Kind of like a dumping ground. Maybe some of them eroded and the radioactive waste had an effect on the virus?” said Shane, squaring his surprisingly broad shoulders for emphasis.

It was a good point. Shane had made so many immature and sometimes annoying comments in the months that he had been working in her lab, that she often didn’t pay much attention to him, but this comment showed that he was on-topic and attempting to contribute to the conversation. She did not want to squelch his spirit, and furthermore, she was not certain that his hypothesis was that far-fetched. She had seen the journal articles about the tons of nuclear waste that had been unlawfully disposed of beneath the ice. She looked around at the group, but most were staring either at the ground or at the black stone surface of the lab table, lost in thought.

“Well Shane, at this point we know so little about the problem that I think it’s worth it for you to investigate more along those lines,” said Sarah. “Obviously you won’t be able to immerse yourself in that question, but definitely do check it out and see what you can uncover.”

Shane beamed with pride and Sarah thought about how a little thing, a small gesture such as being taken seriously, made such a difference in people’s perception of themselves and others. At five foot five, Shane was the shortest male in the lab. He was also one of the youngest in her group, and she imagined that those two facts were probably the reason that he spent so much time trying to stand out in meetings by saying inappropriate things. She would try to remember that he really did have an intelligent mind when she became annoyed with him the next time. Maybe she could regularly find small ways to affirm him to keep him from becoming too crazy with his ideas.

“Also, and probably most importantly, we don’t have any idea how to stop Laptev. We don’t have a vaccine or any medicines that seem to work,” said Sarah. “It will be next to impossible for us to create an effective vaccine in just six weeks, but if we can at least advance in that direction, come up with some clues as to how the next researchers should proceed, it would be important. Let’s not lose track of this goal, even if we know we cannot accomplish it.”

“The thing is, viruses like Laptev must have been around for thousands of years and no one cared until now,” said Emile. He had the slightest of French accents which came across in an ever so soft rounding of words with the letter “r” so that a word like “viruses” sounded more like “viwuses.”

“They were buried under the ice for thousands of years, not out killing a whole lot of innocent people like they are now,” said Drew.