2015/03/17 by Ricard Solé, Ricard V. Solé, Salva Duran-Nebreda +6
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems (nlin.AO) #Biocrusts and Microbial Ecology #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantitative Methods (q-bio.QM) #Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life #nlin.AO #q-bio.QM
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1503.05043
8 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2015/03/17 · openalex publication_date 2015/03/17 · arxiv updated 2015/03/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Mounting evidence indicates that our planet might experience runaway effects associated to rising temperatures and ecosystem overexploitation, leading to catastrophic shifts on short time scales. Remediation scenarios capable of counterbalancing these effects involve geoengineering, sustainable practices and carbon sequestration, among others. None of these scenarios seems powerful enough to achieve the desired restoration of safe boundaries. We hypothesise that synthetic organisms with the appropriate engineering design could be used to safely prevent declines in some stressed ecosystems and help improving carbon sequestration. Such schemes would include engineering mutualistic dependencies preventing undesired evolutionary processes. We hypothesise that some particular design principles introduce unescapable constraints to the engineered organisms that act as effective firewalls. Testing this designed organisms can be achieved by using controlled bioreactor models and accurate computational models including different scales (from genetic constructs and metabolic pathways to population dynamics). Our hypothesis heads towards a future anthropogenic action that should effectively act as Terraforming agents. It also implies a major challenge in the existing biosafety policies, since we suggest release of modified organisms as potentially necessary strategy for success.