Scientists around the world are working to revive ancient ice-encapsulated cells to find new sources of life-saving drugs and possibly bring back long-extinct species, such as the dodo bird.
The science, called renaissance biology, has made great strides over the past year as researchers in the field turn to the past for solutions for the future, CNN reported.
Although scientists do not want to bring back dinosaurs à la Jurassic Park – although some have the goal of reviving lost plant and animal species – they hope that the study of prehistoric cells can reveal new sources for drugs as well as ways to thwart old dangers – dormant pathogens.
The research also offers a glimpse into human history and how our ancestors lived and died thousands of years ago, according to CNN.
Jean-Michel Claverie, an emeritus professor of medicine and genomics at the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine in Marseille, France, has identified a possible “zombie virus” lurking in Siberian permafrost.
Viruses that have been buried for tens of thousands of years could return and potentially destroy life on Earth as global temperatures rise and ice melts.
Resurgent biological scientists are working on “zombie viruses” found in ancient ice, including the ancient “pandora” virus from thawing permafrost pictured here. Jean-Michel Claverie/IGS/CNRS-AM
In 2014, Claverie isolated a virus researchers found in permafrost and revived it by inserting it into cultured cells — making it infectious for the first time in 30,000 years, according to CNN.
Then last February, he and his team isolated several types of ancient viruses from multiple Earth samples that represented five new families of previously unknown viruses. They only infect single-celled organisms with the virus in their research as a safety measure. The samples were dated between 48,500 and 27,000 years ago.
This zombie virus poses a major threat to humans, Claverie told CNN.
“We see this virus that infects amoeba as a surrogate for all the other possible viruses that might be in the permafrost,” the professor said.
Environmental virologist Jean-Michel Claverie has identified a virus that has been dormant for years in Arctic ice. SVFU
“Our reasoning is that if amoeba viruses are alive, there’s no reason why other viruses wouldn’t be alive, and capable of infecting their own hosts.”
Other “renaissance biologists” are studying ancient specimens as a potential source of antibiotics to fight pathogens that have become increasingly resistant to overused conventional treatments.
César de la Fuente, Assistant Professor to the President at the University of Pennsylvania, and his research team are analyzing genetic information from Neanderthals and extinct animal species to find small protein molecules or peptides that they believe have the power to fight bacteria.
“Bacteria from today have never encountered those molecules so they might give us a better chance to target today’s problematic pathogens,” de la Fuente told CNN.
More ambitiously, biotechnology and genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences announced this year its plans to revive the dodo – a flightless bird that has been extinct since the 17th century – and reintroduce it to its natural habitat on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
Scientists have discovered a virus tens of thousands of years old in Siberian permafrost. AFP via Getty Images
The company is also using breakthrough DNA sequencing, gene editing technology and synthetic biology to try to bring back the ice age giant woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct in Australia in the last century.
In their quest to revive the dodo, geneticists discovered cells that act as progenitors for reproductive organs — known as primordial germ cells, or PGCs — in Nicobar pigeons, the dodo’s closest living relative, which can grow successfully in chicken embryos, according to CNN.
Scientists will compare the genomes of the dodo and the also extinct Rodrigues solitaire, a close relative of the dodo, and see the differences. They will then edit the Nicobar pigeon PGC to give the physical characteristics of the dodo.
AP
The cells will then be inserted into chicken and rooster embryos, which in theory will have dodo-like offspring.
“Physically, the restored dodo will be invisible from what we know about what the dodo looks like,” Matt James, Colossal Biosciences’ chief animal officer, told CNN last month.
If successful, the offspring will not be true dodos – but rather a hybrid representation of the bird.
“Because of the complexity of recreating a species from DNA, even if it is possible, [it] can only produce dodo-esque creatures,” said Julian Hume, an avian palaeontologist and research associate at London’s Natural History Museum.
“It would then take many years of selective breeding to raise the little pigeons into the big flightless birds. Remember, nature took millions of years for this to happen with the dodo,” he told CNN.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
