Bacteria from mammoth poop brought back to life in Dutch lab | science

It becomes a kind of microbiotic Jurassic Park“: Dutch researchers’ experiment with 28,500-year-old woolly mammoth droppings. The animal was previously found in perfect condition under the ice on a Siberian island,” he writes. devotion.

Mammoths were found in 2012 on the Siberian island of Klein Lyakhovsky. The animal was indeed a special find, but it didn’t stop there. Because mammoths turned out to have well-preserved turds.

This gave the Dutch researchers ideas. The scientists took a small sample from the female animal and examined it for traces of the bacteria.

Turns out the permafrost (an area where the ice never completely melts) has done its job. For example, many live bacteria are found in the detritus. They have evolved so that there are now five different species of so-called actinomycetes crawling around in the Leiden lab.

“Somehow it makes sense that we could bring bacteria back to life, because permafrost is one big freezer,” said researcher Gilles van Wiesel. devotion. “It’s still a magical idea,” says Professor of Molecular Biotechnology at Leiden University.

Together with microbiologists from Wageningen, Amsterdam and Joze Mutual Van Wezel recently shared his findings with other biologists. Whether afraid of bacteria as in Jurassic Park take a life of its own? “Not at all. These bacteria are no different.”