Synthetic Biology for Terraformation Lessons from Mars, Earth, and the Microbiome
Conde-Pueyo, Nuria (Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (UPF-CSIC) (Barcelona))
Vidiella, Blai (Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (UPF-CSIC) (Barcelona))
Sardanyés, Josep (Centre de Recerca Matemàtica)
Berdugo, Miguel (Universitat d'Alacant. Departament d'Ecologia)
Maestre, Fernando T. (Universitat d'Alacant. Departament d'Ecologia)
de Lorenzo, Victor (Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB-CSIC))
Solé, Ricard (Santa Fe Institute)

Date:	2020
Abstract:	What is the potential for synthetic biology as a way of engineering, on a large scale, complex ecosystems? Can it be used to change endangered ecological communities and rescue them to prevent their collapse? What are the best strategies for such ecological engineering paths to succeed? Is it possible to create stable, diverse synthetic ecosystems capable of persisting in closed environments? Can synthetic communities be created to thrive on planets different from ours? These and other questions pervade major future developments within synthetic biology. The goal of engineering ecosystems is plagued with all kinds of technological, scientific and ethic problems. In this paper, we consider the requirements for terraformation, i. e. , for changing a given environment to make it hospitable to some given class of life forms. Although the standard use of this term involved strategies for planetary terraformation, it has been recently suggested that this approach could be applied to a very different context: ecological communities within our own planet. As discussed here, this includes multiple scales, from the gut microbiome to the entire biosphere.
Grants:	European Commission 766975 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad FIS2015-67616-P Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación RYC-2017-22243 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2015-71509-C2-1-R Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación RTI2018-098322-B-I00 European Commission 242658 European Commission 647038 European Commission 702057 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación FJCI-2018-036520-I
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Terraformation ; Mars ; Evolution ; Microbiome ; Synthetic biology ; Drylands ; Hypercycles ; Restoration ecology
Published in:	Life, Vol. 10, Num. 2 (February 2020) , art. 14, ISSN 2075-1729

DOI: 10.3390/life10020014
PMID: 32050455

27 p, 37.2 MB

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