This undated photo provided by the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences show a Sylene stenophylla plant regenerated from tissue of fossil fruit. The plant has been regenerated from tissues found in a squirrel burrow that had been stuck in Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. It is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds. Image: AP Photo/HO, the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences

MOSCOW
(AP)—It was an Ice Age squirrel’s treasure chamber, a burrow containing
fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over
30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists
managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that
paves the way for the revival of other species.

The
Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the
researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable
seeds.

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

“We
consider it essential to continue permafrost studies in search of an
ancient genetic pool, that of pre-existing life, which hypothetically
has long since vanished from the earth’s surface,” the scientists said
in the article.

Canadian researchers had earlier regenerated some significantly younger plants from seeds found in burrows.

Svetlana
Yashina of the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy Of
Sciences, who led the regeneration effort, said the revived plant looked
very similar to its modern version, which still grows in the same area
in northeastern Siberia.

“It’s
a very viable plant, and it adapts really well,” she told The
Associated Press in a telephone interview from the Russian town of
Pushchino where her lab is located.

She voiced hope the team could continue its work and regenerate more plant species.

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 in northeastern Siberia, the sediments dating back
30,000-32,000 years.

The
sediments 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.

“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 Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of
the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel
burrows. “It’s a natural cryobank.”

The
burrows were located 125 feet (38 m) below the present surface in
layers containing bones of large mammals, such as mammoth, wooly
rhinoceros, bison, horse and deer.

Gubin
said the study has demonstrated that tissue can survive ice
conservation for tens of thousands of years, opening the way to the
possible resurrection of Ice Age mammals.

“If
we are lucky, we can find some frozen squirrel tissue,” Gubin told the
AP. “And this path could lead us all the way to mammoth.”

Japanese
scientists are already searching in the same area for mammoth remains,
but Gubin voiced hope 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.

SOURCE: The Associated Press