Russia to build world's largest DNA databank

MOSCOW, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Great Britain is home to the Frozen Ark project, an effort to preserve the DNA and living cells of endangered species. The San Diego Zoo has been operating a so-called frozen zoo -- freezing animal semen, feces and other samples in liquid nitrogen -- since 1976.

But Russia's Moscow State University aims to outdo them both, several times over. The research university recently received a grant from Russia's government -- the country's largest scientific grant ever -- to build a genetic library, filled with frozen DNA from every living creature on the planet.

"I call the project 'Noah's Ark,'" MSU rector Viktor Sadivnichy recently told reporters. "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."

Construction of the databank facility will commence quickly, with plans for the depository to be completed by by 2018.

"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," explained Sadivnichy.

The new database will first be sourced with materials already being held by the university's many research departments. All of its departments will also be involved in sourcing new material.

While the new database will be grand in its aims, it's not entirely unique; the country has also begun work to create a storage facility in Siberia that will use thick, ice-cold permafrost to preserve a variety of seed and plant samples for posterity.

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Russia to build world's largest DNA databank