Creating GMO Super Plants To Fight Climate Change
The Problem
On November 12th of last year, a catastrophic fire danger warning was issued in the Greater Sydney region of Australia for the first time. One of its worst bushfire seasons had occurred and is still destroying a large part of the country. At least 25 people died and thousands are now homeless. The fires have touched every state but the largest fires burn along the eastern and southern coast, which is where most people live. Apart from humans, many animal species have been killed, such as koalas, who are suspected to have 1/3 of their population and habitats destroyed.
These bushfires are not new to Australia, as they happen yearly. However, this time, a climate phenomenon called Indian Ocean Dipole is occurring, causing one side of the Indian ocean to be warmer and the other to be cooler. This effect, which has been thought of by the scientific community to be largely attributed to the effects of climate change, is causing larger fires in Australia while flooding east Africa.
Another large natural disaster — Hurricane Katrina, struck Florida at a category 5 on August 23, 2005, causing damages worth 106 billion US Dollars and costing the lives of 1200 people.
The problem is, these natural disasters have been rapidly increasing in occurance and severity, largely due to climate change and greenhouse gases. Every year, we humans add over 25 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, through deforestation, burning of fossil fuels and driving cars, which ends up warming the earth and damaging more of the environment and our infrastructure. According to the United Nations, we have 10 years before the effects of climate change become irreversible and the world becomes more chaotic.
Currently, countries, corporations, and the public are all taking a stand in this problem. We’ve started looking into innovative technologies, started implementing safer alternatives, and reducing our energy consumption.
Although we have tried making a lot of progress, the world doesn’t seem to be on track for meeting their goals. However, there are some solutions that can potentially aid in ending climate change, and they give new power to plants and trees through a technology that is becoming increasingly known and popular — gene editing.
What is gene editing and how does it work?
It’s in the name — gene editing gives us the ability to edit genes, well, it gets a bit more complicated than that. Let’s start off with some terminology.
Every single organism on earth has DNA, which is essentially the code or building blocks to how a cell should function by itself and with others. The DNA molecule is essentially just a backbone containing 4 parts that can attach on to it — A, C, T and G, and it’s giving instructions for making certain proteins, which are essential to cells.
A gene is a large chunk of DNA and is the section of information that is passed down from both parents to the baby. It also contains additional information, such as how much of a protein to make, when to make it, and when to stop making it. These genes are then wrapped around histones, which are then structured into chromosomes.
Finally, an RNA is a single-stranded copy of the DNA which is able to carry out tasks inside the cell. It uses a specific gene that has instructions on making it and makes a copy, which can then be used to carry out proteins and perform other tasks within the cell.
These may not seem very impressive at first, but genes are literally what makes you and give you certain traits, such as blue eyes, or brown hair. They are also responsible for giving instructions such as resistance to certain diseases and how you react to medications.
Now here’s the really cool part. If genes are the instructions to making life, what if you could… change the instructions? Imagine a cell being told to have resistance to malaria, or have stronger muscles somewhere, that would be CRAZY. However, there has been a lot of controversy around this topic, especially around the ethical implications, but that’s a topic for another time. Take some time to think about how you can change up literally ANY organism to fit the needs of a rapidly changing world. Luckily, a technology that can edit genes already exists, and it uses something called CRISPR-Cas9
CRISPR-Cas9
The technology of gene editing relies on CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) and Cas9, which is an enzyme. These two were originally adapted from a natural gene-editing system found in bacteria. When a bacteria is attacked by a virus, it stores a portion of the viruses’ DNA and uses them to create segments called CRISPR arrays. This allows the bacteria to remember viruses with that DNA, and if they attack again, the bacteria produces an RNA segment to cut the DNA, which disables the virus.
In the lab, a similar process occurs. Scientists create an RNA with a guide sequence that can bind to a certain part of the DNA, and this RNA also binds to a Cas9 enzyme, which cuts the DNA open at a certain location. After this, the cell’s own DNA repair system is used, or a new section is added artificially.
Now that you know how gene editing works, you might be able to see how we can use it to enhance plants in certain ways.
Using gene editing to enhance a plant’s CO2 absorption
There are several devices that can pull carbon from the air and store it underground, such as carbon pumps. However, these devices use extremely difficult processes and are inefficient in order to do so. Because of this, improving existing natural methods might be a much better choice for the environment.
One research team that is looking into this is called Salk Harnessing Plants Initiative. They have found that the majority of the carbon emissions come naturally, and plants are able to store the majority of it. However, because a lot of the plants die, most of the CO2 is released back into the atmosphere. Their solution has “the potential to achieve a 20–46 percent reduction in the excess CO2 emissions produced each year by human activity.”
Salk proposes the utilization of gene editing to do 2 main things — make the roots of the plants deeper and larger underground, and produce suberin. Doing this is able to keep the carbon dioxide in the roots of plants after they have died, and distribute the carbon in the roots to the soil, which is able to improve its health. Suberin is able to store carbon in forms that naturally resist decomposition, allowing for a longer release time back into the atmosphere. They are currently looking into which genes that can increase root size and suberin production in order to modify them. With adequate resources, they will have prototypes of these GMO plants within five years.
Climate change is an incredibly pressing problem, with the potential to wipe out many species and ruin planet earth. If solutions like these are able to come to fruition and make a large-scale impact, we won’t need to worry as much about meeting an extremely tight deadline.
Takeaways
- Climate change poses a huge threat to mankind and animals as well. This problem needs to be solved but not enough effort is being put into solving it.
- A recent technology called gene editing is able to edit part of genes in order to change the traits of certain genes — can be used to solve many problems, including diseases, as well as augmenting organisms to have certain traits.
- The Salk Harnessing Plants initiative is currently looking into solving this problem through gene editing
- They are trying to increase the size of the roots in plants and increase the amount of time it would take for the stored CO2 to be returned to the atmosphere.
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