Benford G
Department of Physics, University of California, Irvine 92717.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1992 Nov 15;89(22):11098-101. doi: 10.1073/pnas.89.22.11098.
A broad program of freezing species in threatened ecospheres could preserve biodiversity for eventual use by future generations. Sampling without studying can lower costs dramatically. Local labor can do most of the gathering. Plausible costs of collecting and cryogenically suspending the tropical rain forest species, at a sampling fraction of 10(-6), are about 2 billion dollars for a full century. Much more information than species DNA will be saved, allowing future biotechnology to derive high information content and perhaps even resurrect then-extinct species. Parallel programs of in situ and other ex situ preservation are essential to allow later expression of frozen genomes in members of the same genus. This is a broad proposal that should be debated throughout the entire scientific community.
在受威胁的生态圈中广泛开展物种冷冻计划，可以保护生物多样性，以供子孙后代最终利用。在不进行研究的情况下进行采样，可以大幅降低成本。大部分采集工作可由当地劳动力完成。以10的负6次方的采样比例，收集并低温保存热带雨林物种一个世纪的合理成本约为20亿美元。保存的信息将远不止物种的DNA，这能让未来的生物技术获取高信息量，甚至可能复活已灭绝的物种。开展原地保护和其他迁地保护的并行计划，对于使冷冻基因组能在同一属的成员中得以后期表达至关重要。这是一项应在整个科学界进行辩论的广泛提议。
