Synthetic Biology for Terraformation Lessons from Mars, Earth, and the Microbiome

Life

Josep Sardanyés¹  FernandoT. Maestre²  Miguel Berdugo³  Blai Vidiella³  Nuria Conde-Pueyo³  Ricard Solé³  Victor de Lorenzo⁴ 

[1] Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, Campus UAB Edifici C, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain;Departamento de Ecología and Instituto Multidisciplinar para el Estudio del Medio “Ramon Margalef”, Universidad de Alicante, Carr. de San Vicente del Raspeig, s/n, 03690 San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, Spain;ICREA-Complex Systems Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Plaça de la Mercè, 10, 08002 Barcelona, Spain;Systems and Synthetic Biology Program, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB-CSIC), Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain;

关键词: terraformation;    mars;    evolution;    microbiome;    synthetic biology;    drylands;    hypercycles;    restoration ecology;   

DOI  :  10.3390/life10020014

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

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.

【 授权许可】

Unknown