DailyDirt: Playing With Biological Fire By Reviving Ancient Organisms

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Mar 19th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Life has existed on the Earth for a pretty long time, perhaps longer than you might imagine. Biology seems pretty resilient, though, there have been five major mass extinctions (the last of the five killed off the dinosaurs) -- and at least 20 total mass extinction events over the last half billion years or so. Maybe we're working on the sixth major extinction event by messing around with nuclear weapons or the Large Hadron Collider. Or perhaps we'll bring back something from the past that we'll regret. Here are a few of examples of ancient organisms that we might not want to revive.

Scientists pulled up an ancient moss buried below the permafrost from an island called Signy (not too far from Antarctica) -- and brought that moss back to life. This particular moss is about 1500 years old, but it's not the oldest multicellular organism brought back to life by humans. The current record holder is a 31,800 year old flowering plant called Silene stenophylla, but that plant was cloned and required more complex laboratory manipulations to resuscitate. Ancient moss might have another chance to beat the record if researchers can revive 50,000 year old mosses from Canada's Baffin Island. [url]
Siberia scientists say they might have a decent shot at cloning a woolly mammoth with the help of a modern female elephant. It might take decades to accomplish a cloning procedure, but they have a woolly mammoth carcass that is well-preserved which is a good starting point. [url]
A 30,000+ year old virus from the Siberian permafrost has become infectious again, thanks to some French researchers. This ancient virus attacks amoebas (not people or other animals), but its cousins could be lurking in the permafrost, ready to come out if global climate change warms up the right areas. [url]

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Filed Under: biology, biotech, cloning, extinction, moss, permafrost, resuscitation, silene stenophylla, virus, woolly mammoth

9 Comments

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Lawrence D�Oliveiro, 19 Mar 2014 @ 5:30pm

If Frozen Bugs Were Capable Of Infecting Humans ...
... it�s not clear why they should end up confined to permafrost, since there have been plenty of humans around to keep infecting over the past several hundred thousand years.
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zip, 19 Mar 2014 @ 5:53pm

Ice-Man
I was disappointed that they didn't try to clone the Ice-Man when they had the chance.
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Spaceman Spiff (profile), 19 Mar 2014 @ 6:11pm

To paraphrase an old saying
It's not safe to fool with Mother Nature!

She killed off these life forms for a reason - like to give us a chance. And she will probably kill us off as well to give the next candidate for king of the earth a chance to do better / smarter than us... Generally, evolution is a slow process, but sometimes change is mind-numbingly quick!
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Roger Strong (profile), 19 Mar 2014 @ 9:52pm

Playing in controlled conditions
A problem we're having here in Canada is that the permafrost is receding. Any infectious viruses lurking in the permafrost may very well be reappearing anyway.

Discovering it - and what it can do - well ahead of time under lab conditions seems like a good idea.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2014 @ 12:46am

Re: If Frozen Bugs Were Capable Of Infecting Humans ...
Quick answer is that they are. Or rather, their descendants, billions of generations removed, still infect us. The possible threat here is that modern human immune systems may not be prepared for a prehistoric blast-from-the-viral-past.
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the truth, 20 Mar 2014 @ 1:12am

Re: Re: If Frozen Bugs Were Capable Of Infecting Humans ...
I believe it will be the other way around for sure! That wooly mammoth would die from the common cold today but I believe its less likely that would have something that would bother us. Or both but most defiantly the other way around. Examples of such can be found today so this is pretty certain
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charliebrown (profile), 20 Mar 2014 @ 5:06am

Mammoth
Would cloning a wooly mammoth result in cheaper* wool? If so, I'm all for it! (*Cheaper as in cheaper on the environment to produce as well as the actual monetary cost)
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2014 @ 6:11am

Re: Re: If Frozen Bugs Were Capable Of Infecting Humans ...
"The possible threat here is that modern human immune systems may not be prepared..."

Yeah, maybe. On the other hand, the human immune system has been fighting the descendants of these creatures, i.e., millions of generations of the ever-more specifically evolved and competent microbial attackers. It's more likely that the upteenth precursor ancestral critter is just plain outclassed by the contemporary human immune system. Additionally, ancient beasties likely have little or no resistance to even old, current relatively less effective drug agents.
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Thorsten Roggendorf, 22 Mar 2014 @ 4:19am

The sixth extinction
The sixth extinction is in full progress and it don't need no nukes. It is not even a modern phenomenon. Apparently African fauna had time to adapt to human hunting pressure but once humans left Africa we built a traceable path of destruction. Obviously we came back to Africa with better gear and made ends meet there, too.
The phenomenon of the sixth extinction is known at least since the mid nineties when Leaky and others wrote a book about it. The extinction rate is on par with the 5 great extinctions since the cambrian explosion (half a billion years ago) and it currently looks like the total extinction ratio will be among the worst of these six events.
Personally I believe the problem is at least equally grave as climate change the latter is the much better brand, though.
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