Posts tagged revival

A group of Australian scientists claim they have pulled off a world first by reviving the yeast of a 220-year-old beer salvaged from a shipwreck. A detailed DNA analysis of the yeasts was undertaken to find out if the yeasts were present because of contamination. The brewer’s yeast brettanomyces was found. It is not used in modern commercial brewing, but was used everywhere in old-style brewing. Also present was the brewer’s yeast Saccharomyces, but not like it had ever been seen before. The yeast was a hybrid that sat closest on the family tree to Trappist ale, made by monks in Belgium.

via http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016–06–14/worlds-oldest-beer-brought-back-to-life-scientists-claim/7496532

During the Ice Age, Earth’s northern reaches were covered by chilly, arid grasslands roamed by mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and long-horned bison. That ecosystem, known by palaeontologists as the mammoth steppe, vanished about 13,000 years ago. It has no modern counterpart. Yet one of its plants has reportedly been resurrected by a team of scientists who tapped a treasure trove of fruits and seeds, buried some 30,000 years ago by ground squirrels and preserved in the permafrost (S. Yashina et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118386109; 2012). The plant would be by far the most ancient ever revived; the previous record holder was a date palm grown from seeds roughly 2,000 years old.

via http://www.nature.com/news/wild-flower-blooms-again-after–30–000-years-on-ice–1.10069