We’ve got a timely story this week with Halloween just passed of some very old seeds being brought back from the (near) dead.  Found in an ancient squirrel burrow in northeastern Siberia, ancient Silene stenophylla  (or maybe S. linnaeana?) fruits were to be the oldest viable multicellular organisms.  Due to the undisturbed frozen nature of the permafrost surrounding them, these 31800 ± 300 y old ancient seeds were still able to grow, flower, and set viable seed.  Compared to extant S. stenophylla, the ancient plants had a slightly different flower morphology and flower sex.  Instead of having all bisexual flowers, the ancient S. stenophylla had female primary flowers followed by bisexual flowers.   While the focus of this study was to determine if plants could be regenerated from ancient seed, the findings support investigations into biochemistry and cytogenetics of regeneration and population genetic studies these ancient population among others.  --Anna Greenlee

Yashina S, et al. (2012) Regeneration of whole fertile plants from 30,000-y-old fruit tissue buried in Siberian permafrost.  PNAS 109: 4008-4013.