{"id":34942,"date":"2017-07-28T12:52:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T12:52:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-06-19T10:05:30","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T10:05:30","slug":"9942-should-genetic-engineering-be-used-as-a-tool-for-conservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/nature\/9942-should-genetic-engineering-be-used-as-a-tool-for-conservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Should genetic engineering be used as a tool for conservation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The worldwide effort to return islands to their original wildlife, by eradicating rats, pigs, and other invasive species, has been one of the great environmental success stories of our time.\u00a0Rewilding has succeeded on hundreds of islands, with beleaguered species surging back from imminent extinction, and dwindling bird colonies suddenly blossoming across old nesting grounds.<\/span><\/p>\n

But these restoration campaigns are often massively expensive and emotionally fraught, with conservationists fearful of accidentally poisoning native wildlife, and animal rights activists having at times fiercely opposed the whole idea. So what if it were possible to rid islands of invasive species without killing a single animal? And at a fraction of the cost of current methods?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the tantalising \u2013 but also worrisome \u2013 promise of synthetic biology, a Brave New World sort of technology that applies engineering principles to species and to biological systems. It\u2019s genetic engineering, but made easier and more precise by the new gene editing technology called CRISPR, which ecologists could use to splice in a DNA sequence designed to handicap an invasive species, or to help a native species adapt to a changing climate. \u201cGene drive\u201d, another new tool, could then spread an introduced trait through a population far more rapidly than conventional Mendelian genetics would predict.<\/p>\n

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Synthetic biology, also called synbio, is already a multi-billion dollar market, for manufacturing processes in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, biofuels, and agriculture. But many conservationists consider the prospect of using synbio methods as a tool for protecting the natural world deeply alarming. Jane Goodall, David Suzuki, and others have\u00a0<\/span>signed a letter<\/a>\u00a0warning that use of gene drives gives \u201ctechnicians the ability to intervene in evolution, to engineer the fate of an entire species, to dramatically modify ecosystems, and to unleash large-scale environmental changes, in ways never thought possible before.\u201d\u00a0The signers of the letter argue that such a \u201cpowerful and potentially dangerous technology \u2026 should not be promoted as a conservation tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Environmentalists and synthetic biology engineers need to overcome what now amounts to mutual ignorance, a conservationist says.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, a team of conservation\u00a0biologists writing early this year<\/a>\u00a0in the journal\u00a0Trends in Ecology and Evolution<\/em>\u00a0ran off a list of promising applications for synbio in the natural world, in addition to island rewilding:<\/p>\n