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Russian Scientists Revive Plant From 30,000-Year-Old Seeds
An anonymous reader writes "It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species. The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds. ... 'The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,' said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. 'It's a natural cryobank.'"
You don't usually see something like this in your gardening store.
Ezekiel 23:20
Another Ice Age sequel *facepalm*
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
Well the question is, how can you know anything about an extinct ecosystem? And therefore, how could you ever assume that you can control it? I mean, you have plants in this building that are poisonous. You picked them because they look good. But these are aggressive living things that have no idea what century they're in, and they'll defend themselves, violently if necessary.
Am I missing some major potential social or environmental benefit to doing this?
It proves that it's possible to grow plants from long-frozen seeds, so shows its worth preserving (freezing) seeds just in case something really bad happens to the living plants. (This has already happened, where species have been wiped out in the wild by mining and forestry, then reintroduced once the companies have left.)
The techniques might be useful for other, more recently extincted (?) species.
And it's challenging and interesting, that is reason enough.
do we have to know the benefit up front? So maybe we recover some extinct species that got wiped out by your invasive ones. Or maybe we find a bunch of seeds, grow the plant and find out it's the perfect plant for producing biofuels. Or maybe we restore some lost Amazonian species that just happens to lead to a cure for cancer. Who knows, isn't it worth trying?
Just what I need - another plant to be allergic to.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
If you read the article, which a lot of people on Slashdot don't do, a lot of scientists are skeptical, but even if the Russians did exactly what they said they did, they didn't grow the plants from seeds in the normal sense. They basically cloned the plants, growing them from cells in the seeds--if only a few cells are alive, they could be cloned but it probably wouldn't be enough for the seeds to sprout.
Did you fail at math?
Obviously he went to high school in Texas. He probably did very well in math.
.. revived plants kill you!
FTFY. From the second FA:
Tragedy has now struck the Russian team. Dr. Gilichinksy, its leader, was hospitalized with an asthma attack and unable to respond to questions, his daughter Yana said on Friday. On Saturday, Dr. Price reported that Dr. Gilichinsky had died of a heart attack.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
...I really have to question the idea of bringing back life that ceased to exist thousands, and eventually possibly millions, of years ago. Jurassic Park jokes aside, I hope they will take adequate precautions to not bring back something that could wind up being disastrous on the CURRENT iteration of Earth. I'm all for stuff like this, I just hope they err on the side of caution before bringing back random plants and introducing them into a modern ecosystem that has evolved well beyond when some of those plants will have existed.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
My mistake, I missed a zero. Funny how many different numbers I see flying around for how old humans are, yet everyone's up in arms about a simple oversight.
Hi there, you must be new to Slashdot. Welcome to Slashdot.
Something a lot of people seem to be missing: this is not an extinct species. These are seeds from a plant that is still alive and growing wild in Siberia to this very day.
I absolutely agree with you that threatened plants should be preserved. There is a problem, though, and that is some plants are very adapted to a tiny environmental niche. By way of example, there are prairie flowers here in Minnesota that grow only on the south side of sandy glacial moraines in a few mile radius from Glendalough State Park. According to park rangers, efforts to plant them in cultivation elsewhere have failed, as have efforts to transplant them elsewhere in the state. It's something about the soil, the drainage, the natural fertilizers, the rain, the light, the humidity, the temperatures, the snowfall, the bugs, the freezing, all coming together so intricately that nobody knows which environmental cues are required to grow them.
Overall, this plant does not have great survival traits. And as such, I'd guess that such a plant isn't adding much to the ecosystem. But as often happens with wildflowers, there may be a certain pollinator that is finely adapted to it, meaning that if the plant dies, that specialized moth/fly/insect may die with it. So while the plant may not be directly critical to humans, it's still having some impact on its environment.
In terms of "what is the most important plant to save", this wouldn't be at the top of the list. And in terms of "if we have storage space to save only 100,000 different seeds, so let's save the ones we know we can grow back", it also won't make the cut. But in terms of "what plants are so threatened that we should preserve their seeds while a few still exist?" it might make that list.
John
No you're way more than a zero off. Homo Erectus originated nearly 2 million years ago. So even if it had been 300,000 rather than 30,000 you're still nearly an order of magnitude off from being even remotely right.
Joan Rivers and some parts of Cher are even older than that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."