Can Viruses Be Our Friends?

The Antonine plague and Cyprian plague raged through the Roman Empire from A.D. 165 to 262, killing up to one-third of the empire’s population, and potentially sparking a major religious shift. Before the Antonine plague started, the empire was pagan, with only around 40,000 Christian followers, yet within a generation of the end of the Cyprian plague, Christianity had become the main religion in the Roman Empire. How did this happen? Historians claim that Christian worshipers played a key role in managing the pandemic by caring for the sick and building charity networks, whereas pagan Romans mostly looked after themselves. Essentially what happened is people of Christian faith survived these plagues at higher rates than pagans, and developed immunity much faster. Romans quickly attributed this success to religion, drawn by its selfless and charitable nature they’ve started considering Christianity as a more attractive option. Christians also didn’t miss out on the opportunity to attract more believers.

The following plague was far more devastating, once again wiping out those at the top of the food chain. The plague of Justinian plague had disrupted Medieval Europe’s slave supply chain, forcing it to drop slavery and push peasants into serfdom, a form of forced labor that guaranteed certain rights and military protection.Serfs were successfully exploited until the Black Death broke out in 1347, killing around 80 million Europeans. By the time it was over in the early 1350s, a once overpopulated and feudal society started to once again experience major economic shifts, this time defined by fair labor, technological innovation, and even culture. Labor shortages enabled serfs to negotiate for better treatment and utilize a whole arsenal of labor-saving technology such as iron plows, printing presses, water pumps and gunpowder weapons. It was a long road to abolishing serfdom for good, yet the first lucky free peasants expressed desire to move up in the world. They’ve rushed into cities to take up crafts and trades, with some of them becoming rich and forming a new middle class. With wealth came the desire for luxury goods, especially from exotic countries, therefore significantly increasing spending power and development of shipping technology. And if that’s not enough, take into account that the middle class also became patrons for arts, literature and science, setting trends that would eventually explode into the Renaissance. The post-pandemic situation even reformed stone-written rules of male inheritance: citizens would pass on property to their daughters for the first time.

Virologists are still not aware of how many virus species exist, nor do they know how many of them might seek out to kill you. Only a few thousand have been classified, which is a small fraction of a possible 10 nonillion (1031) individual viruses on Earth. Viral ecologist Marilyn J. Roosinck claims that scientists are biased as they concentrate mostly on pathogens while  ignoring their benevolent counterparts. But even they know that without viruses life would cease to exist. 

What makes viruses distinct from other lifeforms is their nomadic nature as they can’t survive on their own and must inhabit a host to self-replicate. Their origins are unclear: some may have come from plasmids (migrating pieces of DNA), while others may have evolved from bacteria. Viruses carry genetic material and evolve through natural selection, which is why some biologists consider them to be living beings, although they do lack the key criteria for life: cell structure. A large portion of scientists call them parasites since viruses invade living beings and manipulate cellular infrastructure by injecting genetic material into the host’s DNA, initiating a rapid cycle of reproduction and spreading into other organisms.

What’s fascinating is that migrating viruses also leave random traces of genetic code harvested from previous hosts, which serve as natural evolutionary triggers. In 2016, Stanford University researchers revealed that 30% of all protein adaptations since humans split with chimpanzees have been affected by viruses, concluding that they are among the most dominant drivers of evolution across mammalian and human proteomes.

Here’s a fun little accident viruses cooked up a while ago. Scientists believe that long-term human memory is the result of an infection that happened 400 million years ago, resulting in the unique Arc protein that looks and acts like a virus, even though it’s not. In 2018, researchers were in awe of what they discovered. “We went into this line of research knowing that Arc was special in many ways, but when we discovered that Arc was able to mediate cell-to-cell transport of RNA, we were floored,” said the study’s lead author Elissa Pastuzyn. “No other non-viral protein that we know of acts in this way.” Civilization would have been a whole lot different without advanced cognitive ability, and long-term memory is now credited as the backbone of any human achievement. Memory genes have appeared even before our ability to bear live offspring: there’s evidence that human ability to have live births is due to genes derived from retroviruses that attacked our ancestors more than 130 million years ago. So if it weren’t for viruses, we’d probably still be laying eggs.

Viral outbreaks would usually catch people off-guard, revealing society’s weak spots such as bad hygiene, lack of sanitation, substandard healthcare or even poor city planning. That was one of the reasons for knocking down and redesigning 19th century Paris, which was often described as a breeding ground for disease. Also no surprise why London finally built a modern sewer system following three outbreaks of cholera and the Great Stink of 1854. The 1918 Spanish Flu is a great example of how certain policies that helped beat the virus persisted even after it was all over. Americans never got back to drinking from a common cup in schools, trains or offices; neither did they pick up spitting again. Pandemics might eventually go away, yet habits tend to stick around longer.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has already produced a couple of distinctive practices that could survive into our post-pandemic environment. People are encouraged to avoid handshakes and embrace the fist bump, elbow bump, even the thumb up to minimize the risk of getting infected. All of this is complemented by increased usage of hand sanitizers and masks, frequent handwashing and surface cleaning; we’ve even started airing out rooms more often. We’ll likely retain these habits, which in turn will give a heads up in avoiding other viruses.

PhD student at Vilnius University Life Sciences Center Rasa Tumaševičiūtė shares her opinion on how we cause harm to ourselves by refusing to stop draining natural resources.

Though the pandemic-induced crisis might seem like a never-ending nightmare, there’s reason to think that it sparks creativity and encourages us to be more open-minded. Coronavirus is the biggest global crisis since WW2, and the first one where IT is being used to such a large extent. Scientists have utilized a myriad of medical innovations such as autonomous disinfection bots, drones to deliver medical supplies, contactless temperature guns, virtual health consultations and diagnostics and isolation units, all accompanied by cutting-edge artificial intelligence and big data technology that predicts potential outbreaks. Discoveries and advances made during the pandemic aren’t going anywhere after it’s all over as they’ll ease into our everyday lives. Companies are already talking on how the pandemic accelerated digital adoption by several years, meaning that people are now more eager to hit virtual gyms, online classes, even museums, galleries or remote poetry readings. And since there’s an increased demand for digital services, businesses feel obliged to push on making experience more believable.

New media and interdisciplinary creator Mindaugas Gapševičius talks about his relation with the microorganism world.