Moscow State University has been granted a billion rubles, the largest ever scientific grant in Russian history, to collect and store the DNAover every single living and extinct creature to have ever walked the Earth. This is planned to be the world’s first database containing such a comprehensive reserve of biological information about the species of the Earth.

The project has been termed ‘Noah’s Ark’ after the Biblical story by the rector of Moscow State University, Viktor Sadivnichy. He has explained to the media that the ambitious project will involve a databank which will store comprehensive information about every single creature that has ever lived on Earth and will be accessible to students and to the public in the form of a giant ark, approximately 430 square kilometers in size. Some of the specimens will be held in cryogenically frozen form, whereas others will have their DNA extracted and stored in petri-dishes. There will also be information banks where DNA is not necessarily available, he explains. The ark, which is expected to be finished in 2018, will be housed in one of the central campuses at the university.

Not Quite The Biblical Noah’s Ark, But Possibly The Next Best Thing

According to the university’s press office, the database will involve biomaterials collected from various branches of Moscow State University including the Botanical Garden, the Anthropological Museum, the Zoological Museum and others. In addition to involving established academics from various departments of the university, it will also involve extensive input from the younger generation of scientists affiliated with Moscow State. It is also hoped that assistance will be forthcoming for the project from other places across the world.

This is not the first time that a country has embarked on such an incredibly ambitious project. In the United Kingdom, the Frozen Ark project is still ongoing. The British project involves the preservation of the genetic information of all endangered life forms on the planet Earth. This project is referred to as the animal equivalent of the Millennium Seed Bank which plans to collect a specimen of all of the world’s seeds.

However, this latest project is considered to be the most ambitious of all the biological data collection enterprises, and the historical significance of the Ark is not lost on the staff at Moscow State University. “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, ” the rector said.