Russia Is Building ‘Noah’s Ark’: DNA Databank Will Cover All Living Things

Noah’s Ark, for those of you unfamiliar with the biblical story, was a tale from the Old Testament in which man-of-God Noah built a boat large enough to house two of every living thing so that life could continue after the Great Flood, which was sent to cleanse mankind of its wickedness.

The flood lasted 40 days and 40 nights, per the Genesis telling, after which Noah’s boat found dry land and life continued.

Now Russia is borrowing from that concept and attempting to build a Noah’s Ark of its own. Only this one will take around three years to pull off, and it will be comprised of DNA instead of gopher wood.

RT reports that the “ark” will be a DNA database of every living thing.

The project will be made possible thanks to “Russia’s largest-ever scientific grant to collect the DNA of every living and extinct creature for the world’s first database of its kind.”

This “Noah’s Ark” will be built and housed at one of the central campuses of Moscow State University, and it will be around 430 square kilometers in size (or around 106,255 acres).

“I call the project ‘Noah’s Ark.’ It will involve the creation of a depository – a databank for the storing of every living thing on Earth, including not only living, but disappearing and extinct organisms. This is the challenge we have set for ourselves,” said MSU rector Viktor Sadivnichy.

“It will enable us to cryogenically freeze and store various cellular materials, which can then reproduce. It will also contain information systems. Not everything needs to be kept in a petri dish. If it’s realized, this will be a leap in Russian history as the first nation to create an actual Noah’s Ark of sorts.”

Russia has been preceded in these efforts by an attempt at creating a seed bank to document all plant life (in Norway) and a “Frozen Ark” created by Britain that seeks to document all endangered life forms. This is, of course, far larger in scope and as some have pointed out, it may not even be possible since most don’t even believe science has discovered all life forms.

What do you think about this idea, readers? Is three years enough time to build a DNA version of Noah’s Ark; is Russia equipped to handle such a task; and what do you think the benefit to mankind might be?

Sound off in our comments section.

[Image via ShutterStock]