The Anthropocene era has become as a dramatical perturbation of our world. Ecosystems have been deeply transformed in terms of biodiversity or ecological networks integrity. Biogeochemicals cycles are altered and in some cases close to the tipping point. Human population still growing exponentially and require for food and and energy.
Of course that we can do more in optimisation of productivity and sustainability, but the question is. could we do more to promote the restoration of ecosystems?
Synthetic biology has tools to do that. Actually, the main force that slows this are the wanders about the controllability and process safety. Some previous attempts have been done, for example, in the Staling URSS, farms was fertilised with microorganisms, but it didn't work because those microorganisms couldn't survive in a rich and highly populated environment. This is not trivial, we have to know the rules that allows survive a invasor microorganism in a mature environment and also need to develop the strategies for the biocontainment of this modified organisms. But the question again id, Should we do that or have we to do that?
http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.8708
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Atmospheric Sciences
- Climate Science
- Climate Change