超低温保存植物探索者-Nature专访中科院林亮博士

2022年4月份，中科院昆明植物所的林亮博士接受Nature专访，回顾了他在濒危动植物种质资源超低温保存的工作历程以及其工作成果对未来的重要价值。

林亮博士是少数的把研究目标定位在超低温下长期保存植物种子与组织领域的植物科学家，林亮博士的工作成果让我们在2009年以前建设的低温存储体系换发青春，我们为林亮博士感到荣幸。

这个专访让我们回想起12年前的样本库设计与建设过程，我们把2007年在比利时参观学习的成果用在了2008年的昆明植物所，使得细节元素即使在今天也不显过时，充分展现了在有限经费条件下，如何让存取标本更加人性化以及保障长期的安全性。

2017年12月，我们售后团队与林亮博士一起对该系统做了整体的检修服务，林亮博士严谨、认真地工作作风给工程师们留下深刻印象。
 

专访原文如下：

Here at the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species of China at the Kunming Institute of Botany, we want to preserve the seeds of as many wild plants as possible from across China’s vast land area. I work on developing the best techniques to freeze plant seeds and tissues at ultracold temperatures, to maintain their viability for years. The idea is that if we plant these seeds again in hundreds of years, a plant will grow.

The picture shows me taking a sample of embryos from the seeds of a magnolia tree out of a liquid-nitrogen cryopreservation tank to test whether they’ll regrow when thawed. I dress in protective equipment from head to toe to protect me from the nitrogen, which has a temperature of −196 °C.

When I came to the institute in 2009 as a PhD student, it had just purchased its first liquid-nitrogen cryopreservation system, but no one knew how to operate it. I was the one to work it out.

Over the years, human activities and climate change have had a negative impact on plant biodiversity. The ultimate goal of the plant seed bank is to collect and preserve all wild plant species in China that are endangered, rare or valuable. We want to save these species before they go extinct. We’ve collected seeds from nearly 11,000 plant species, but that’s only one-third of what grows in China.

Many wild plants have genes that help them to survive in harsh environments and make them disease- or drought-resistant. In the future, we might need these genetic materials to breed new crops that can better adapt to the changing climate.

I am constantly amazed by how diverse and beautiful seeds are. Some of them are brightly coloured and others are star-shaped. I feel proud when I see the unfrozen seeds germinate in test tubes and gradually grow into large plants. We have three plants in the seed-bank lobby that we cultivated from preserved tissues, and they are all now taller than me.

Nature 604, 590 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01049-8

Plant scientist Liang Lin develops cryopreservation technology to store seeds and plant tissues at liquid-nitrogen temperature to conserve biodiversity.