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Is there a benefit to bringing long-lost plants back to life? I assume there's potential for this technology to be applied elsewhere, and it's a truly awesome a
by ceol 15y ago
Is there a benefit to bringing long-lost plants back to life? I assume there's potential for this technology to be applied elsewhere, and it's a truly awesome achievement, but could the plants themselves be used for something?
- rcthompson 15y agoWell, we don't know what life was like with this "extinct" plant species, so we can't really tell yet if it has practical utility for humans (for example, producing a previously-unknown antifungal agent). However, the ability to rescue species from extinction is a very useful tool to have lying around, in case a plant critical to modern life is pushed to extinction.
- lignuist 15y agoEvery plant can be used for something.
- wisty 15y agoOften, blue sky research has the best ROI. You get smart people working really hard on it. There's a lot less crap to deal with, so they are totally focused on solving the problem. And the problems are actually quite clear cut (is the plant back from the dead yet?), so a lot of management issues disappear. A well defined (yet useless) goal is easier to manage than a wishy-washy "improve it, but don't change anything".
- aptwebapps 15y agoSee daviddoran's comment and rcthompson's reply http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3614304 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3614304