In the heart of the Siberian permafrostkept by time and frost, a plant that has been missing for millennia has found a way to return to life. It is the Silene Stenophyllaa variety of narrow leaf champion, which now holds the primacy as oldest living organism ever regenerated from vegetable fabric. The company was completed by a team of Russian scientists, after years of studies and attempts.
It all started in 2007, when a group of researchers identified an ancient Arctic squirrel lair that dug a 38 meters deep In perennial ice, along the Kolyma river, in the north-eastern Siberia. The discovery was extraordinary: in those underground rooms, which remained intact for tens of thousands of years, the squirrel had hidden Immature seeds and fruitsthen freezed forever in Pleistocene frost, together with Fossil remains of mammoths, bisons and wool rhinoceros.
Radioocarbon analyzes have provided a surprising figure: 31,800 yearsa dating that swept away any previous record. The oldest vegetable seed regenerated until then belonged to a 2,000 -year -old date palm, found in Israel. But this time, the time jump was epochal.
An unprecedented regeneration
However, the mature seeds found did not react to germination attempts. For this, scientists have decided to try a more complex road: thePlactial tissue extraction from still immature fruitsand the subsequent in vitro cultivation. With great precision, they managed to grow 36 new plantsidentical to each other, through a process of plant cloning.
The regeneration took place in the laboratory in controlled conditions and had an outcome that left the experts speechless: perfectly formed white flowersfertile plants and one 100% germination of the seeds produced, even superior to 90% recorded in modern samples of the same species.
A lost glacial phenotype
But there is more. Regenerated plants, despite being genetically compatible with the current silene silene, present some intriguing morphological differences. THE petals are longer and more spaciouswith a slightly different aspect than today’s specimens. A variation that suggests a phenotype of the glacial era survived in the permafrost, but disappeared during the modern evolution.
At the moment, it is not yet clear what has determined this variation. It may be an adaptation to extreme environmental conditions of the time, or an evolutionary trait then lost over time. What is certain is that the discovery offers new reading keys on the evolution of plants and on the biological conservation potential of the permafrost.
This study, published in 2012 in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from Svetlana Yashina and colleagues, shows that the Permafrost is not just a climatic trapbut also a Natural genetic archive of priceless value. The extreme cold, combined with the absence of defrosting cycles and the presence of sugars such as sucrose in the placenta, has created an environment capable of preserving vegetable material in almost perfect conditions.
The regeneration of Silene Stenophylla reminds us that Biodiversity is not always lostbut it can be hidden in the depths of our planetready to return to light.
