[EAS] Arctic Plant Revived

Peter J. Kindlmann peter.kindlmann at yale.edu
Sat Feb 25 01:40:26 EST 2012


Dear Friends and Colleagues -

This is a bit off-topic, but I found it fascinating, possibly because 
my wife (and sometimes I) have been growing orchids for 45 years. And 
it's a kinder, gentler scenario than Jurassic Park.

    --PJK

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[from the Scout Report 
http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/2012/scout-120224.php ]

====== In The News ====

Using fruit from a squirrel's burrow, Russian scientists generate an
ancient arctic flower Dead for 32,000 Years, an Arctic Plant Is Revived
[Free registration may be required]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/new-life-from-an-arctic-flower-that-died-32000-years-ago.html

Ancient plants back to life after 30,000 frozen years
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17100574

Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice
http://www.nature.com/news/wild-flower-blooms-again-after-30-000-years-on-ice-1.10069

Future zoos to have woolly mammoths and tiger robots
http://news.discovery.com/animals/future-zoos-woolly-mammoths-tiger-robots-clone-120217.html

Botany: An Introduction to Plant Biology
http://biology.jbpub.com/botany/4e/

Botanical Society of America: Plant Morphology
http://www.botany.org/plantimages/plantmorphology.php

It may be a while before scientists resurrect woolly mammoths and saber-
tooth tigers, but as of this week, the world is now home (once again) to the
narrow-leafed campion. This tiny arctic flower died out 32,000 years ago,
but this week a new report was released in The Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences that announced the triumphant return of the ancient
plant. The team working on this project is based at the Russian Academy of
Sciences research center, and has backed up its claim of plant regeneration
with a firm radiocarbon date. The current record for a similar plant
regeneration is held by a date palm recovered from the fortress of Masada.
As it turns out, the material for this project came from fruit from the
plant stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow in Siberia. The
procedure for creating such a plant is quite complex: the researchers
essentially took cells from the placenta of the fruit, thawed out the cells,
and grew them in culture dishes into whole plants. While their claim needs
to be independently verified, it certainly looks quite promising. [KMG]

The first link will take visitors to a New York Times article from this
Tuesday about this recent scientific discovery and experiment. The second
link will take interested parties to a great piece from the BBC's Richard
Black about this rather fantastic scientific endeavor. The third link will
lead people to a nice article from Nature's Sharon Levy about the work done
by the Russian scientists to make this experiment feasible. The fourth link
leads visitors to a speculative piece about the future possibilities that
cloning might have for zoos in the decades to come, courtesy of Discovery
News. The fifth link will take visitors to a great resource for those
interested in plant biology: an online complement to a botany textbook,
complete with discussion questions, plant biology basics, and so on. The
final link will whisk interested parties to a great site on plant
morphology, complete with annotated images.

-----------------------------
 From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2012.
http://scout.wisc.edu/


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