Interesting Green: Ice Age flower blooms after 30,000 years

Today, Wednesday February 22, 2012, Page 36, World
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Source Website: http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC120221-0000165/Ice-Age-flower-blooms-after-30,000-years
By AP, BLOOMBERG, Updated 09:49 PM Feb 21, 2012

PHOTO: A prehistoric plant resurrected from frozen tissue.

A narrow-leaf campion, revived from the remains of 32,000-year-old fruit that was found buried within the fossilized burrows of ancient squirrels deep in the Siberian ice (BLOOMBERG).

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MOSCOW - It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for more than 30,000 years.

From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that could pave the way to the possible resurrection of Ice Age mammals.

"If we are lucky, we can find some frozen squirrel tissue," said Dr Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study.

"And this path could lead us all the way to mammoth."

PHOTO: A red squirrel curls up to protect itself from freezing day-time temperatures in Warsaw's central Lazienki Park. Fruit seeds stored away by squirrels more than 30,000 years ago and found in Siberian permafrost have been regenerated into full flowering plants by scientists in Russia, a new study revealed Tuesday. (AFP Photo/Janek Skarzynski).

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The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds. Canadian researchers had earlier regenerated some significantly younger plants from seeds found in burrows.

The Russian experiment proves that permafrost serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms, said the researchers, who published their findings in yesterday's issue of the United States journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

PHOTO: Ice Age mammals
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The Russian research team recovered the fruit after investigating dozens of fossil burrows hidden in ice deposits on the right bank of the lower Kolyma River.

The sediments, dating back 30,000 to 32,000 years, were firmly cemented together and often totally filled with ice, making any water infiltration impossible - creating a natural freezing chamber fully isolated from the surface.

PHOTO: The Russian research team recovered the fruit after investigating dozens of fossil burrows hidden in ice deposits.

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"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 Dr Gubin, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. "It's a natural cryobank (A place of storage that uses very low temperatures to preserve semen or transplantable tissues)."

The burrows were located 38m below the present surface in layers containing bones of large mammals, such as mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, bison, horse and deer.

PHOTO: Woolly mammoth tusks dug up from Siberian permafrost in 1999

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Japanese scientists are already searching in the same area for mammoth remains, but Dr Gubin hopes that the Russians will be the first to find some frozen animal tissue that could be used for regeneration.

"It's our land, we will try to get them first," he said.

By AP, BLOOMBERG, Updated 09:49 PM Feb 21, 2012

PHOTO: Ice Age Dinosaurs
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Source Website: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/02/20/flowers-regenerated-from-30000-year-old-frozen-fruits-buried-by-ancient-squirrels/

Svetlana Yashina from the Russian Academy of Sciences grew the plants from immature fruits recovered from the burrow. She extracted their placentas – the structure that the seeds attach to – and bathed them in a brew of sugars, vitamins and growth factors. From these tissues, roots and shoots emerged.

Yashina potted the plants and two years later, they developed flowers. She fertilised the ancient flowers with each other’s pollen, and in a few months, they had produced their own seeds and fruits, all viable. The frozen plants, blooming again after millennia in the freezer, seeded a new generation.

PHOTO: Still growing strong: After 30,500 years buried in permanently frozen soil, the Silene stenophylla bore fruit and bloomed petite white flowers.

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S.stenophylla’s resurrection shows how many treasures lie buried within the world’s permafrost. This soil, defined as that which stays below freezing for two years or more, covers a fifth of the planet’s land. It is home to bacteria, algae, fungi, plants and more. In the fossil burrows that Yashina has studied, scientists have found up to 600,000 to 800,000 seeds in individual chambers.

Update: The lead author, David Gilichinsky passed away on 18 February, just two days before his final paper was published.