… And a Flower Blooms

Jurassic Park’ the blockbuster movie was one of the technically advanced movies of its time. The story is located in a theme park of dinosaurs long dead resurrected using latest biotechnological advancements. Scientists in this movie locate an amber from the Ice Age, which has a mosquito preserved in it; they extract the DNA of the mosquito and then combine it with frog’s genome to complete the genetic missing links. Thus, with such technology they resurrect dinosaurs ranging from Triceratops to Tyrannosaurs in the present times. [1]

Such ‘bringing back extinct to life’ celluloid fiction turned to reality when scientists in Russia brought back to life a pre-historic flower. While researching in the Siberian Tundra, near the Kolyma River, Russian scientists came across fossilized, squirrel burrows containing variety of seeds including those of the extinct ‘Campion’ plant, which last bloomed in the Pleistocene Age. The team cultivated a cell culture, created permafrost conditions and then implanted it in an artificial biome. The flower bloomed after 32000 years becoming the oldest tissue to live. [2]

Through science, humans have pierced the ‘unbroken’ veil of time. he above resurrection of the past would not have occurred in the absence of technology, for without technological resurrection the Campion plant would have disappeared in the layers of time. Resurrection was only possible because of technological intervention in the fabric of time. Today it is the flower, tomorrow it could be animals and beyond that, humans. If history can be intervened, is there a possibility of a future-story being intervened? The answer is in the assertive although some scientists are skeptical. The reason is that the main characteristic of technology is growth and the possibilities of growth are everywhere, in the present, the past and the future.

However, scientific experiments are not restricted to mere labs. Eventually, they have a spillover effect in the society. Thus, making us re-visualize, re-define the core structure on which the society stands.

 

Anuradha Nayak,

Doctoral Researcher, Faculty of Law, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi.

 

Notes:

[1] Janet Maslin, Screen stars with teeth to spare, (New York Times, June 11, 1993) http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE1D71E3DF932A25755C0A965958260

[2] Sharon Levy, Wild flower blooms again after 30000 years on ice: Fruit hoarded by ancient ground squirrels give new life to prehistoric plants, (Nature, Feb 21 2012) http://www.nature.com/news/wild-flower-blooms-again-after-30-000-years-on-ice-1.10069