[ti:Scientists Aim to Freeze DNA Before Creatures Die Off]
[ar:Marsha James]
[al:Science In The News]
[by:www.21voa.com]
[00:00.00]Earth is in the middle of its sixth mass extinction. 
[00:05.46]The last such event took place 66 million years ago, 
[00:12.09]when an asteroid 每 a huge space rock 每- hit our planet. 
[00:18.68]The asteroid strike killed off dinosaurs and almost everything else.
[00:26.26]Now, scientists are in a race against time to classify -每 organize into groups -每 
[00:35.15]the estimated 11 million species alive today. 
[00:40.00]Yet only about two million species are known to science. 
[00:46.09]Researchers are worried many will disappear before they even have a name.
[00:53.62]The United States Botanic Garden has launched a field project with a really big goal. 
[01:01.28]Vicki Funk, a botanist with the Smithsonian Institution, explains.
[01:07.96]"We are trying to get about half of the diversity 
[01:11.26]of plant life on Earth at the genus level in two years."
[01:15.96]The effort is part of what Smithsonian officials are calling the Global Genome Initiative. 
[01:24.62]Its goal is to classify 50 percent of all plant species. 
[01:30.95]Vicki Funk admits it seems like a huge project, 
[01:36.24]but says the Botanic Garden is a great place to start.
[01:42.09]"Because if you look around you, you see all kinds of plants 
[01:45.78]from all over the world growing right next to one another. 
[01:48.18]So instead of going to Madagascar to get a plant and Hawaii to get a plant, 
[01:52.70]you can get them in rooms that are adjacent to one another."
[01:55.20]Many of the species are already growing in botanic gardens 每 
[02:00.35]places known for their collections of rare or endangered plants. 
[02:05.97]The aim is to set up a program to classify plants 
[02:11.91]at 36 partner organizations in 17 countries.
[02:17.45]One recent day in Washington, 
[02:20.39]Vicki Funk performed a test-run on a long-stemmed pink flower called Sabatia. 
[02:28.91]She took pictures of the plant. She then put one piece into silica gel, 
[02:37.00]and dropped another piece into liquid nitrogen, where it is frozen. 
[02:43.57]Next, she removed the flower and pressed it in a plant book for a museum collection.
[02:51.86]"The plants are placed between these corrugates (corrugated cardboard) 
[02:54.98]that have holes in them and when we get the press back we put it into a dryer 
[02:59.42]that blows hot air through it and overnight it will turn it into a beautiful specimen. 
[03:04.26]Usually it saves the color. It looks very nice."
[03:06.75]All the plants are numbered and linked in a computer database with the frozen pieces. 
[03:13.58]These specimens are sent to the Smithsonian Institute's Genomics Laboratory 
[03:21.26]for studies of their genetic material. 
[03:23.83]Jonathan Coddington directs the Genome Initiative 
[03:29.05]at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. 
[03:33.38]He says the project is on target to gather samples from all 10,000 plant and animal families, 
[03:42.48]and half the genera in those families, within five years.
[03:48.10]"Just into our biorepository in the pipeline I have over 2,000 families and close to 12,000 genera."
[03:57.19]Jonathan Coddington says that biorepository is the largest 
[04:03.68]such facility in the world. It collects, classifies and stores samples.
[04:11.34]"What we want to do is organize it and get a lot of information 
[04:16.72]evenly spaced out across all of life from bacteria to humans."
[04:21.54]College student Kristen Van Neste is helping with the project.
[04:26.74]"What we are doing is important because it is not just for our use, its for future use."
[04:33.19]Scientists will use the information to identify species, solve environmental problems, 
[04:41.22]study climate change and look for new cures for diseases.
[04:47.01]I'm Marsha James.
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