In a previous article we wrote about the possibility that science could achieve the immortality of human beings, today we focus on achieving the resurrection.
We are located in the north-west of the icy Russian Siberia , specifically on the bank of the Kolyma River, the favorite area of paleontologists to find mammoth bones. Here, in 2012, a group of scientists found frozen fruits buried in the pantries of burrows of arctic suslics ( Urocitellus parryii ), a species of ground squirrel. The interesting thing about the matter is that these cavities are between 20 and 40 meters below the surface of the current ice level and at the same depth as the remains of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and other representatives of the Upper Palaeolithic.
As reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team from the Russian Institute for Cell Biophysics succeeded in bringing the same plants that produced the frozen fruits back to life. A growing up , they saw that corresponded to the Silene stenophylla plant, a type of carnation, existing 30,000 years ago. To date, the oldest seeds that had been made to sprout were only 2,000 years old, in a laboratory in Israel.
Part of the success is believed to be due to the fact that once frozen, the seeds were never thawed again, according to the study. Professor David Gilichinsky, author of the study, stated that “the presence of vertical ice wedges shows that the fossil burrows and their contents have never thawed since burial and simultaneous freezing. Suslics seem to have hidden their food in the most cold from its burrow, which subsequently froze forever, presumably due to a cooling local climate. “
Although at first they were not able to make the mature seeds germinate, they did so by cultivating parts of the fruits, corresponding to “placental tissue”, in their laboratory. The main theory of the Russian team is that the high amounts of sucrose found in tissue cells could have served to preserve them; a technique that is also used in medicine to preserve vaccines in very hot African continents, where they cannot be delivered frozen.
But the study goes even further. The natural cryopreservation of plant tissue over many thousands of years would demonstrate the role of permafrost as a repository for an ancient gene pool. In this way, if they used this same tissue culture technique, they could even revive already extinct plants.
According to statements for the BBC by Dr Probert, “We predict that the seeds would remain viable for thousands, possibly tens of thousands of years. […] Then there is also the opportunity to resurrect extinct flowering plants, from the Same way we talk about bringing mammoths back to life, the same kind of idea as in the movie Jurassic Park. “
References:
Yashina, S., Gubin, S., Maksimovich, S., Yashina, A., Gakhova, E., & Gilichinsky, D. (2012). Regeneration of whole fertile plants from 30,000-y-old fruit tissue buried in Siberian permafrost. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109 (10), 4008–4013. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118386109
