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24,000-year-old organisms found frozen in Siberia can still reproduce
- epicureanideal 5y ago"What could go wrong?"
- NegativeLatency 5y ago> They’ve also existed for at least 35m years – and can be found today in freshwater lakes, ponds, streams and moist terrestrial habitats such as moss, lichen, tree bark and soil. Imagine how they’d feel about humans coming in and messing stuff up.
- fctorial 5y agoHow do they know that the sample wasn't contaminated?
- bluenose69 5y agoThe paper^[1] discusses metagenomic information that suggests the results are not the subject of contamination: > As only one pair of reads was found in the metagenome, the analyzed fragment was covered just once, necessarily capturing one gene variant. These results strongly suggest that the isolate originated from the permafrost layer and not sample contamination 1. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00624-2 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)...
- xaduha 5y agoIt's thawing out with or without people being there, it's just a matter of time. Do you really think ex-permafrost shouldn't be studied? Hopefully with pandemic still ongoing there will be more precautions, that's all.
- agilob 5y agoWhat could go wrong with what? They "just" found some units in permafrost and woke them up. >They’ve also existed for at least 35m years – and can be found today in freshwater lakes, ponds, streams and moist terrestrial habitats such as moss, lichen, tree bark and soil. They haven't found a new specie, they found frozen units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bdelloidea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bdelloidea
- viraptor 5y agoFrozen units which skipped the last 24k years of evolution. Even if that species exists today, "what could go wrong" could include some small behaviour change which current environment can't counteract.
- robofanatic 5y agoI always wonder about this while watching movies like Jurassic Park. How could a T-Rex even survive in the current environment after skipping millions of years of evolution. Were they even breathing the same air?
- edgyquant 5y agoNo iirc the air back then had way more oxygen and way more carbon dioxide which allowed for a warmer climate and the animals/plants to grow larger. Same with the ancient giant insects, their bodies would not allow them to survive today on such little oxygen which is why insects are all tiny today.
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y agoIt raises a question is what else is lurking there deeply frozen?
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoprobably something something dreaming.
- nemosaltat 5y agoph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn?
- bryanrasmussen 5y agonow you're speaking my language!
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoPretty sure we need to look under the ocean for him. Maybe the old ones set up some Shoggoth on the north pole as well as the south?
- pjmlp 5y agoMegatron.
- varispeed 5y agoNo, Vectron - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icTrzUuWlHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icTrzUuWlHI
- pjmlp 5y agoAh, got it wrong. :)
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y agoLets just open some wine and see if we can get back into it...
- Gabriel_Martin 5y agoPossibly worsening the Zoonotic viruses issue we're already experiencing?
- donatj 5y agoIsn’t that the exact plot of John Carpenter's “The Thing”?
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoI was thinking it was more like "Life found a way!"
- dmos62 5y agoThe Expanse is a variation on that too.
- InsomniacL 5y agoStargate too, where they dig up an 'ancient'
- tanbog4 5y agoThey are all, to some extent, a retelling of Pandora's Box
- canadianfella 5y agoNot really
- ThalesX 5y agoLike how any book / tv show / movie is, to some extent, a retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 88840-8855 5y agoGood question. We have to investigate it. Let's separate. You go into that dark cave, I go by myself into the dark attic. I suggest to wear heels so we cannot run.
- mrath 5y agoIt is amazing and frightening at the same time. The other day I was reading somewhere that micro organisms on the surface of spacecraft survived on the cleaning liquid that is designed to kill them.
- rollcat 5y agoIt's because with continued use, the cleaning liquid will continue selecting for strands that will survive.
- BBC-vs-neolibs 5y agoBut it's not like they take old spacecraft sterilized with these solutions, bring them back, and try the liquid again? Yes, I'm sure there is some kind of selection, but it should be more of a one-shot affair, not a continous cycle, like how it with anti-biotics and resistant strains.
- 867-5309 5y agokinda makes you wonder about the panspermia theories when space is mostly cold, dry, oxygen deprived and full of radiation. perhaps some more advanced humans elsewhere worked out how to bind DNA to these creatures and shot them at their nearest habitable exoplanet
- fctorial 5y agoWhat would that accomplish? Marking other planets like a dog does with its pee? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGjekRgtxSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGjekRgtxSA
- uCantCauseUCant 5y agoHammering the dark forest with bio-weapons in pre-emptive strikes.
- shoto_io 5y agoI guess to see if something “grows” on that planet and then know if it’s worth to settle over… (Face Screaming in Fear Emoji)
- Mizza 5y agoLife is the most wonderful gift.
- echelon 5y agoWe should encode a message in their DNA that can't be evolved out. Think chirality. Something fundamental. Maybe one day they'll evolve and get the message.
- cortesoft 5y agoThis is the plot of a Star Trek episode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(Star_Trek:_The_Next...
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- known 5y agoWill climate changes activate these organisms ?
- pvaldes 5y agoI still are worried by the possibility of a much more modern organism falling into a crevice and ending in a much deeper layer than its real time would grant. We need more answers here.
- msrenee 5y agoUsually they're testing the ice it's frozen in to determine the age. I think it's the CO2 ratio or something similar trapped in bubbles. So if something fell in, it's going to be frozen in modern ice with modern gas ratios.
- abricot 5y agoWe are digging ever deeper for life that we can extinct.
- nix23 5y agoOr we dig until we find life than can extinct us: >Smilla's Sense of Snow
- robofanatic 5y agolet alone reproduction, wonder if these organisms would even survive much longer if they are brought back to life some how, because they will be suddenly exposed to other organisms which have evolved during these last 24000 years. wonder if they are immune to the environment that has changed a lot in that time period.
- viraptor 5y agoIt can go either way as we've discovered a few times by importing animals to Australia. There may be no natural predators attaching to that kind of organism, allowing it to thrive.
- otikik 5y agoSounds like a very good idea.
- Evidlo 5y agoThere have been dormant spores found in amber over 20 million years old that have been revived. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/268/5215/1265 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/268/5215/1265
- Growling_owl 5y agoImagine waiting 24,000 years for round #2!
- lamontcg 5y agoSo you're saying I've still got a chance?
- williesleg 5y agoThat's great, we can bring back my hero, Stalin! Love the Socialism!