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Scientists Clone Oldest Living Organism
goran72 sends along the story of the world's oldest living organism, a shrub that grows in Tasmania and reproduces only by cloning. Tasmanian scientists have cloned Lomatia tasmanica as part of a battle to save it from a deadly fungus. From the RTBG's press release (which seems to load slowly in the US):"The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens [RTBG] is working towards securing the future of a rare and ancient Tasmanian native plant... Lomatia tasmanica, commonly known as King's Lomatia, is critically endangered with less than 500 plants growing in the wild in a tiny pocket of Tasmania's isolated south west. The RTBG has been propagating the plant from cuttings since 1994... 'Fossil leaves of the plant found in the south west were dated at 43,600 years old and given that the species is a clone, it is possibly the oldest living plant in the world,' [Botanist Natalie Tapson] said."
First, of course, what exactly constitutes a single "organism" is a bit controversial, especially with plants, and especially with clonal colonies. But even if you accept clonal colonies as bona-fide organisms, Pando in Utah may or may not be older than Lomatia tasmanica , depending on which age estimates you believe.
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As a horticulturalist who's worked on tissue culture projects...
1- tissue culture is growing a piece of plant of a medium (usually agar with nutrients) through various stages
2- there is no universal formula and different plants need different nutrient and environmental mixes to go through each stage
3- you're trying to get this piece of plant to create a root and shoot system
4- it requires many different steps and setups/transplants to walk a piece of plant material through the stages to where you can actually put a piece of rooted material into the ground and know it will make a plant
5- you'd be amazed how picky (or impossible...so far) it is to coax a chunk of plant tissue into creating a whole new plant out of it's cells