Scientists revived a plant from 32,000-year-old seeds found frozen in the Siberian permafrost.
Making this the oldest organism ever brought back to life.
Researchers discovered the seeds of the Silene stenophylla plant buried 124 feet beneath the earth near the Kolyma River. Tucked away inside an Ice Age squirrel’s burrow, the seeds were preserved at a constant 19°F (-7°C), a deep freeze that effectively prevented cellular decay since the era of woolly mammoths. While the mature seeds were damaged, scientists extracted viable tissue from immature samples and placed them in a sterile growth medium. The result was a successful regeneration, leading to plants that not only flowered but also produced fertile seeds of their own, displaying subtle evolutionary differences from their modern-day descendants.
This extraordinary feat does more than just resurrect a lost piece of history; it provides a vital blueprint for the future of biodiversity. By studying how these cells remained viable across thirty-two millennia, experts hope to enhance the longevity of modern seed banks like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. As permafrost continues to yield living fragments of ancient ecosystems, the discovery suggests that the Earth’s frozen layers are not just a graveyard of the past, but a potential laboratory for preserving the genetic heritage of our planet against future global disasters.
source: Yashina, S., Gubin, S., Maksimovich, S., Yashina, A., Gakhova, E., & Gilichinsky, D. Regeneration of whole fertile plants from 30,000-y-old fruit tissue buried in Siberian permafrost. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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