( Five minute read)

Society is already wrestled with the consequences of genetic engineering, fiddling with genomes, but synthetic biology poses a number of practical risks.

68% of biodiversity has been lost since 1970, and the amount of human-made material including concrete, plastic and bricks now outweighs the total mass of biological matter on the planet.

The likely truth is that technology might be the only clear way out of future disasters given the terrifyingly short timescales involved.

Humans have been manipulating the genetic code for thousands of years, by selectively breeding plants and animals with desired characteristics.

As we have learned how to read and manipulate the genetic code, we have started to take genetic information from one organism and transfer it to another. This process we call genetic engineering, and it has enabled researchers to develop different varieties of plants and animals.

However for instance this technology could produce devastating biological weapons, or escape, mutate and cause unforeseeable damage to the ecosystem.

The ethical concern, rest not with the tool itself, but the hand that wields it.

In a rapidly changing world, that is facing major global challenges, the potential uses of synthetic biology are far reaching, and the impact of these uses could be profound.

From climate change to pandemics, synthetic biology can provide the tools to engineer biological processes that can deliver targeted, rapid and sustainable solutions. From monitoring and remediating environmental contamination, managing invasive pests and pathogens, reviving endangered species, and engineering resilience against climate change, to enabling new strategies to store data.

Humanity is already on the path to decoupling from natural systems – so if we want to avoid the worst scenarios of this trajectory, what might we do about it?

The ability to learn from and leverage technology that has already made the living world offers seemingly endless opportunities.

We use recombinant DNA technology already to have cells to synthesize medical antibodies, insulin, and other things like the hormone Epo.  (a hormone produced by the kidney that promotes the formation of red blood cells by the bone marrow.)

Or.

In the future. A ‘self-healing’ paint that consists of microscopic organisms that could repair itself over the lifetime of a ship, and tanks or armoured vehicles that could wear a coat of organisms that self-heal and change their colour on command.

How far could it go?

The potential impact of this area of science is astonishing; From bacteria that could generate energy, to creating food without the need for large organisms we might instead genetically integrate ourselves with the biosphere, such that both human and natural are transformed, acting as biological arks into the future, or as a form of beautiful annihilation into a future weird ecology.

This is an area of research described as the design and construction of artificial biological entities that previously did not exist, or the redesign of existing natural biological systems.

Rather than seeking to preserve natural systems.

In the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature – how might we avoid the most dystopian of these futures?

Can humanity leave nature behind?

Imagine a future where humans have transcended their current state to combine with technology – in the most extreme cases, evolving into uploaded digital beings.

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The recent achievement of scientists in manufacturing the genome of a bacterium from off-the-shelf chemicals, and placing it in a related bacterium which is now happily reproducing under the control of the manmade DNA, holds fantastic promise.

• A team of researchers in the United States and United Kingdom say they have created the world’s first synthetic human embryo-like structures from stem cells, bypassing the need for eggs and sperm. These embryo-like structures are at the very earliest stages of human development: They don’t have a beating heart or a brain, for example.

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Humans do not need to insert themselves into controlling life processes in every corner of the world, down to the very strands of DNA, to force the Earth system to absorb the shocks of our presence. If the Earth is not to be irreversibly degraded and unbalanced, we need some equal and opposite pull in the direction of replenishing natural complexity.

If the metaphorical “umbilical cord” connecting human survival and the biosphere is well and truly cut.

The threat of an exclusively human-technological world would not be a dystopia to many.

If severe environmental degradation continues, a plausible path is one where humans will, through necessity, decouple from a biosphere that ceases to function.

It is no longer science fiction.

Because trillions of organisms are utilised as food and broken down to fuel human bodies.

Creating synthetic life that is useful to us will probably involve learning a lot more about what the code actually does.

For example, scientists have begun devising ways to synthesise “ecosystem services” – such as pollination or other natural processes that benefit human society.

The newly touted “metaverse”, for instance, promises a form of spatial, workplace and recreational departure from the “meat space” of the physical world: why visit a polluted forest or lake when you can access a near-perfect digital simulation of a clean one from your home?

If the human-biosphere umbilical cord is to be cut, it should leave mother Earth in peak health, and in service to both parties.

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