DailyDirt: Playing With Biological Fire By Reviving Ancient Organisms
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
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]
Filed Under: biology, biotech, cloning, extinction, moss, permafrost, resuscitation, silene stenophylla, virus, woolly mammoth
