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21 Feb 2012

Still sprouting after 32,000 years

"Scientists have been able to grow ancient flowering plants from immature fruit tissues buried 38m under the North-eastern Siberian ice deposits about 32,000 years ago. The tissues were recovered from the burrow of a ground squirrel. The regenerated plants flowered and also produced seeds. These seeds were in turn able to grow into plants that were identical to the parent plants"

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : Still sprouting after 32,000 years: Another significant finding is that tissues remained viable and seeds germinated despite accumulating total gamma ray radiation of 0.07 kGy during the long period of burial.

This natural cryopreservation of plant tissues over thousands of years demonstrates a role for permafrost as a depository for an ancient gene pool … a laboratory for the study of rates of microevolution.

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