ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012
Regeneration of whole fertile plants from 30,000-y-old fruit tissue buried in Siberian permafrost.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Palearctic divide, niche conservatism and host-fungal endophyte interactions shaped the phylogeography of the grassPlant diversity · 2026Article
- Aging and longevity in decades-old genebanked seeds from U.S. endangered plant species: Assessments using survival and RNA integrity assays.American journal of botany · 2026Article
- The Influence of Cryopreservation and Low-Temperature Seed Storage on the Morphological and Agronomical Characteristics of Fiber Flax.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Translational landscape during seed germination revealed by ribosome profiling.The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology · 2026Article
- Planting for posterity.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Characterization and analysis of a Commiphora species germinated from an ancient seed suggests a possible connection to a species mentioned in the Bible.Communications biology · 2024Article
- A novel nematode species from the Siberian permafrost shares adaptive mechanisms for cryptobiotic survival with C. elegans dauer larva.PLoS genetics · 2023Article
- Philosophy and ethics of de-extinction.Cambridge prisms. Extinction · 2023Review
- Choosing the Right Path for the Successful Storage of Seeds.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFOs): role in seed vigor and longevity.Bioscience reports · 2022Review
- Past and present giant viruses diversity explored through permafrost metagenomics.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Water is a preservative of microbes.Microbial biotechnology · 2022Article
- Metagenomic survey of the microbiome of ancient Siberian permafrost and modern Kamchatkan cryosols.microLife · 2022Article
- Evaluating the Microbial Habitability of Rogue Planets and Proposing Speculative Scenarios on How They Might Act as Vectors for Panspermia.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- A prion-like protein regulator of seed germination undergoes hydration-dependent phase separation.Cell · 2021Article
- The genomes of ancient date palms germinated from 2,000 y old seeds.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Why so Complex? The Intricacy of Genome Structure and Gene Expression, Associated with Angiosperm Mitochondria, May Relate to the Regulation of Embryo Quiescence or Dormancy-Intrinsic Blocks to Early Plant Life.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Characterization ofJournal of virology · 2020Article
- Frozen Zoo: a collection of permafrost samples containing viable protists and their viruses.Biodiversity data journal · 2020Article
- How contraction has shaped evolution.eLife · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Whole, fertile plants of Silene stenophylla Ledeb. (Caryophyllaceae) have been uniquely regenerated from maternal, immature fruit tissue of Late Pleistocene age using in vitro tissue culture and clonal micropropagation. The fruits were excavated in northeastern Siberia from fossil squirrel burrows buried at a depth of 38 m in undisturbed and never thawed Late Pleistocene permafrost sediments with a temperature of -7 °C. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating showed fruits to be 31,800 ± 300 y old. The total γ-radiation dose accumulated by the fruits during this time was calculated as 0.07 kGy; this is the maximal reported dose after which tissues remain viable and seeds still germinate. Regenerated plants were brought to flowering and fruiting and they set viable seeds. At present, plants of S. stenophylla are the most ancient, viable, multicellular, living organisms. Morphophysiological studies comparing regenerated and extant plants obtained from modern seeds of the same species in the same region revealed that they were distinct phenotypes of S. stenophylla. The first generation cultivated from seeds obtained from regenerated plants progressed through all developmental stages and had the same morphological features as parent plants. The investigation showed high cryoresistance of plant placental tissue in permafrost. This natural cryopreservation of plant tissue over many thousands of years demonstrates a role for permafrost as a depository for an ancient gene pool, i.e., preexisting life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth's surface, a potential source of ancient germplasm, and a laboratory for the study of rates of microevolution.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.