Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 16, 1995 TAG: 9511160044
SECTION: NATL/ITNL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KENNETH CHANG LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
The seed is thought to be the oldest known to germinate, scientists reported. Should researchers discover the secrets of the lotus - a sacred plant that in Buddhism symbolizes purity and longevity - the benefits could span from hardier crop seeds to a skin cream that thwarts wrinkles.
``Life can be much longer than we ever expected,'' said UCLA plant physiologist Jane Shen-Miller, lead author of the research article that appears in the November issue of the American Journal of Botany. ``We certainly have much to learn about how [lotus seeds] can survive 1,000 years of rest.''
Shen-Miller acquired seven of the lotus seeds, which look like dark brown, peanut-sized footballs, while visiting the Beijing Institute of Botany in 1982. Chinese botanists had unearthed the seeds several decades earlier from a dry lake bed.
The next year, Shen-Miller soaked four of the seeds in water after filing off part of their hard outer husks to allow moisture to reach the partly dried-out centers. Each day, she peered at them.
``Then on the fourth day, the lips started to open, and I saw a little green thing,'' Shen-Miller said Monday. ``It was overwhelming.''
According to one of Shen-Miller's collaborators, UCLA biochemist Steven Clarke, ``It's almost as if you took a woman who's one or two months' pregnant, took the fetus, wrapped it up in a hard shell, and then threw it out into the environment for one year, 10 years, 50 years.''
One seed turned out to be 1,288 years old, according to carbon-dating. Even factoring in the imprecision of carbon-dating - give or take nearly 300 years - the seed had settled into the lake centuries before Marco Polo reached China.
While the sprouting seeds were thought to be important, and Shen-Miller presented the results at a meeting at the time, the research was not published until now.
Last year she gave a 95-year-old seed to Clarke, a specialist on aging. His research has focused on an enzyme called MT - short for L-isoapartyl methyltransferase - that repairs kinks that periodically appear in strands of proteins. MT exists in most creatures, including bacteria, humans and plants.
Clarke found the enzyme in the lotus seed as well: ``If this enzyme was not there, then you'd have to say `There's something wrong with the story.''' Surprisingly, the enzyme appeared as robust as that found in modern-day seeds, he said.
by CNB