SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. -- California Polytechnic State University
microbiology professor Raul Cano has discovered that bacteria millions of
years old can be brought back to life.
Cano, some of his students, and Ambergene Corp. of San Carlos have revived
more than 1,200 types of bacteria and other one-celled organisms as old as
135 million years. Ancient microorganisms continue to be revived at Cal Poly
and at Ambergene.
Their work marks the first proof that any organism approaching such
antiquity can be brought back to life. The achievement opens a new avenue of
discovery in biology and a completely new area of potential applications.
"We have discovered a brand new source of organisms that could produce
life-saving pharmaceuticals or be used in valuable industrial processes,"
Cano said.
"And there's almost no downside," he said. "The risk is very low. These
bacteria are different enough to give us new substances, but not different
enough that we can't recognize them. There's no more danger with these
bacteria than there is with any newly discovered modern microorganism."
The accomplishment will be published Friday, May 19, in Science, the weekly
international research journal of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, in a paper authored by Cano and former Cal Poly
graduate student Monica Borucki.
Cano revived the first of the ancient bacteria in late 1991. The 3 1/2-year
wait for the announcement was necessary to validate the discovery. There
have been claims before of reviving ancient microorganisms, but none has
been conclusively proved.
All of the ancient bacteria revived by Cano were revived from bacterial
spores trapped in amber --fossilized tree sap.