Scientists Clone Oldest Living Organism 141
goran72 sends along the story of the world's oldest living organism, a shrub that grows in Tasmania and reproduces only by cloning. Tasmanian scientists have cloned Lomatia tasmanica as part of a battle to save it from a deadly fungus. From the RTBG's press release (which seems to load slowly in the US):"The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens [RTBG] is working towards securing the future of a rare and ancient Tasmanian native plant... Lomatia tasmanica, commonly known as King's Lomatia, is critically endangered with less than 500 plants growing in the wild in a tiny pocket of Tasmania's isolated south west. The RTBG has been propagating the plant from cuttings since 1994... 'Fossil leaves of the plant found in the south west were dated at 43,600 years old and given that the species is a clone, it is possibly the oldest living plant in the world,' [Botanist Natalie Tapson] said."
why whatcouldpossiblygowrong? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's not the oldest living organism (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe they mean oldest living organism, in the sense of oldest living individual creature, and not the species as a whole.
In other words, they have a specific plant which first sprouted nearly 50,000 years ago. If there's an individual horseshoe crab that is 50,000 years old I'd be very surprised.
Re:Mucking with evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you read the article the thing is being threated by a fungus not native to its habitat. In other words its something MAN brought to it, that is killing it.
Good Job (Score:5, Insightful)
So they cloned a plant that has hitherto successfully cloned itself for a thousands years without any help?
Re:It's not the oldest living organism (Score:2, Insightful)
....which first sprouted nearly 50,000 years ago....
How do they know this? How do they know that their clock has been running accurately for that length of time? That is always one of the assumptions that is taken for granted when someone gives an age of thousands, millions or even billions of years. The assumptions may be valid, but the're still beliefs, because nobody knows for sure.
Re:why whatcouldpossiblygowrong? (Score:1, Insightful)
It is that difficult to tissue culture and you didn't do that at age 6 unless you had a hell of a setup.
I explained what was going on there but my post was deleted because I'm not a member of this site or something.
As a professional horticulturalist who does tissue culture I can say a lot of these replies are going about the logic of what's happened here all wrong.
Tissue culture is rarely plug and play. Tissue culture for many plants requires many steps and transplants through various nutrient and plant growth regulator medias. To even get to this point research must be done to figure how to coax cells into producing shoots and roots you can actually put into soil to grow.
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
So we could have dodo-egg-flavored dog and cat food? Their meat tasted like ass and was somewhat less edible.
I'd rather have brought back a species whose extinction humans attributed to through over-hunting.
Like mammoth. I imagine they should be rather tasty.
Mmmmm... Mammoth ribs...
Scientists Clone Oldest Living Organism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why whatcouldpossiblygowrong? (Score:2, Insightful)