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I guess it's all about freeze/thaw cycles, if the plant can handle one 6 month freeze, it can probably handle one 30,000 year freeze. The freezing is what causes damage, not the being-frozen. I guess.
Please tell me that virusses and bacteria can't be revived after 30k years in ice, or that our imune system is able to remember its defenses against virusses and bacteria it hasn't seen for 30k years.
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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 bota…
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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
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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)
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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 bota…
The Saarland University has a (pretty small) botanical garden that is open to the public.