Another fine guest post from Jacob van Etten.
Places with extreme conditions are good for conservation, whether it be Timbuktu with its dry, hot climate for books or Spitsbergen with its freezing cold for crop seeds. Next year the seeds will start to come to Spitsbergen from across the world to stock the “doomsday seed vaultâ€. Right now the vault is being cooled down, to be reaching -18°C soon.
Low temperatures are key to ex situ conservation of seeds. Cold chambers and freezers stuffed with seeds are found near any plant scientist around the world. The Svalbard project is not only unique because of the size of the vault but also because of its location. The low temperatures on the island will make the vault less expensive to cool as well as less vulnerable to energy failure, a common preoccupation of seed bank managers in those countries where tropical temperatures, unreliable energy networks and unpaid bills tend to converge. An alternative solution, however, seems to be on the horizon. The latest Technology Quarterly section of The Economist runs an interesting story about dry storage of biological materials at room temperature. Wrapped in polymers or sugars, DNA molecules are less vulnerable to degeneration. Perhaps this technology will also be available to seeds some day?
The technology is applied successfully to vaccines. For instance, the company Cambridge Biostability develops a “dry†vaccine against travelers’ diarrhea that should be available by 2013.
These technologies are based on a known biological principle.
Readers of a biological bent may recall buying Sea Monkeys in their youth. These creatures (or, rather, their eggs, which are sold dried in packets) magically came to life when put in water. The eggs are able to survive desiccation (to a water content of less than 1%) because their cellular structure is stabilised by sugar molecules that act like a glass casing.
I didn’t know about Sea Monkeys®, but they seemed to be popular in the 1960s and 1970s. You would think this is a simple product, but reading on the Sea Monkeys website, they claim that quite some technology was required to develop them.
So what about Seed Monkeys®? Well, the term isn’t new, but I would like to know whether seed conservation through anhydrobiosis (no water) without cryobiosis (low temperature) is biologically (or technologically) possible at all.
If that is the case, we shouldn’t look out for cold places but for really dry places to set up ex situ conservation facilities. Obviously, I would vote for Timbuktu.