Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 60 posts

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#21

Post by wollstonecraft »

whyenot wrote: post #14
grondilu wrote: post #9

When talking about megafauna resurrection, it is often said that it's not possible because DNA degrades too much after a few thousand years. Yet apparently the DNA of this plant was still viable. What am I missing?

A seed is a living organism essentially in suspended animation. Cells in the embryo have intact plasma membranes, DNA repair mechanisms are present (although working very slowly), each cell is surrounded by a cell wall, and the entire seed has an outer protective seed coat. When people talk about DNA degrading, they are usually referring to DNA that is no longer inside living cells, and that doesn't have these multip…

Ah, but this was somatic (fruit placental) tissue rather than germ that was viable.

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#23

Post by spacecop »

wpears wrote: post #20
spacecop wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I still don't understand the connection. Aliens buried the flowers under the tundra in the ice age? Why bring it up?

If the DNA in a seed is still in good enough shape to support blooming after being frozen 30,000 years, perhaps a seed frozen in a meteorite [1] could also survive long enough to be spread between solar systems. [1] maybe after glancing off a planet or created by the collision of two large objects

Ah, I see. Thanks!

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#24

Post by Tomte »

whyenot wrote: post #16
marcusgarvey wrote: post #8

Nice to read about a new breakthrough in botany. The field doesn't get much attention at all. Maybe now it will benefit from the popularity of Martian, the movie.

As is true in many areas of organismal biology, botany is a field in decline. There are not a lot of jobs anymore, and in academia, not a lot of grant money. In spite of this, every year universities continue to pump out more and more graduates trained for careers that no longer exist. Some of the best botanists these days are citizen scientists who have day jobs at the Cheesecake Factory or driving limos in Las Vega…

I've recently read a (German-language) article, that botanical gardens in Germany are an endangered species.

That's because they are expensive to maintain, professorships have been faded out and biology students and post-grads are usually not so much interested in real plants and systematics anymore, but more in genetics and laboratory work.

The small state of Saarland doesn't have a single publically accessible botanical garden anymore. Across Germany the outlook is dim.

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#27

Post by tempestn »

grondilu wrote: post #9

When talking about megafauna resurrection, it is often said that it's not possible because DNA degrades too much after a few thousand years. Yet apparently the DNA of this plant was still viable. What am I missing?

Basically just time scale. When people talk about DNA having degraded too much, it's generally in the context of bringing back dinosaurs. Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago, which is (obviously) much longer than 30,000.

Until recently it was thought that DNA degraded more quickly, indeed making it un-viable after only a few thousand years, but a relatively recent study put the half life of DNA at 521 years, meaning that it would take several million years to degrade fully, under ideal conditions.[1]

Therefore, bringing back animals like the woolly mammoth should be quite feasible, but probably not dinosaurs.

[1] http://www.livescience.com/23861-fossil-dna-half-life.html

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#30

Post by tdy721 »

whyenot wrote: post #14
grondilu wrote: post #9

When talking about megafauna resurrection, it is often said that it's not possible because DNA degrades too much after a few thousand years. Yet apparently the DNA of this plant was still viable. What am I missing?

A seed is a living organism essentially in suspended animation. Cells in the embryo have intact plasma membranes, DNA repair mechanisms are present (although working very slowly), each cell is surrounded by a cell wall, and the entire seed has an outer protective seed coat. When people talk about DNA degrading, they are usually referring to DNA that is no longer inside living cells, and that doesn't have these multip…

Plant's also generally contain much more DNA than animals. (fun fact of the day)
Post reply on HN