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Microbes 100M Years Old Found In Termite Guts

Posted by kdawson on from the mutualism-in-action dept.

viyh writes with coverage on MSNBC of the discovery of ancient microbes fossilized in the gut of a termite. "One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open. The resin of a pine tree slowly enveloped its body and the contents of its gut. In what is now the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, the resin fossilized and was buried until it was chipped out of an amber mine. The resin had seeped into the termite's wound and preserved even the microscopic organisms in its gut. These microbes are the forebears of the microbes that live in the guts of today's termites and help them digest wood. ... The amber preserved the microbes with exquisite detail, including internal features like the nuclei. ... Termites are related to cockroaches and split from them in evolutionary time at about the same time the termite in the amber was trapped."

4 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Summer block buster by mangu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That would make a better film than most of the crap out there at the moment.

    How would that be? The evil mastermind, who owns a pest control company, revives the prehistoric termites immune to modern pesticides. And the hero, aided by his beautiful lab assistant, releases into the environment the ancient bacteria that are the termites only natural enemy.

  2. Re:Yes, but it's in Chickens, not frogs by EdZ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'll take anything written in the Mail with a grain of salt. Or rather, several tons of Sodium Chloride.

  3. Re:Amber preservation by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Your sig is all wrong. In Soviet Russia, the government IS the commerce. It's the free economics you retarded Americans always dreamed of!

    Now, now ... no need to sling epithets around, you foreign prick.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  4. Re:Yes, but it's in Chickens, not frogs by daniorerio · · Score: 4, Insightful

    According to Jack Horner, professor of palaeontology

    Yes, I'm sure a professor in paleontology will now everything about the genetic problems that will arise...

    To name a few: Mere DNA is not sufficient for an fertilized oocyte to develop, generally an oocyte contains maternally provided protein and RNA, where are you going to get those? Second is epigenetics: The DNA generally contains a lot of modifications to "switch on or off" genes, during embryonic development the DNA is heavily reprogrammed, those cues are probably very species specific, again where are we going to get an dinosaur oocyte??? I'm sure there are even more difficulties to overcome.