Desperate US bid to engineer corals for climate change
MIAMI : A bit of
coral shimmers like gold in a US lab as part of urgent work to help the species
protect itself from climate change, an effort even skeptical experts see as
sadly justifiable.
Researchers in Florida are aiming to determine whether coral
can be saved from rising water temperatures and acidification by transplanting
stem cells from resistant varieties to those more vulnerable to climate impacts.
In other words, global warming worries have reached a point
that scientists are trying to tweak some organisms’ genetics so that they might
survive.
“Reefs are dying at
an alarming rate and they are not able to keep up with climate change,” Dr Nikki
Traylor-Knowles, who heads a University of Miami team working on the coral,
told media
“At this point, we’ve just got to try everything and see
what works,” she said before nations gathered at the COP26 summit in Glasgow –
seen as a last chance to halt catastrophic climate change.
The Florida research is one of a handful of efforts backed
by Revive and Restore, a non-profit based near San Francisco that sees genetic
engineering as a valuable tool for conservationists working to save plants and
animals from doom.
Organisms on Earth have survived in the long run by
gradually evolving, or moving to places where the land, habitat or temperature
are more hospitable. Climate change is altering the environment too quickly for
that to work.
“We don’t have evolutionary time to help species make that
kind of adaptation,” Revive co-founder Ryan Phelan told AFP at a California
conference.
“We’re going to have to intervene, or we have to let it go,”
she said.
The concern for coral is particularly pressing because
oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat from greenhouse gas
emissions, shielding land surfaces but generating huge, long-lasting marine
heatwaves.
These are pushing many species of coral often dubbed the “rainforests of the oceans”
for their rich biodiversity past their
limits of tolerance.
Along with pollution and dynamite fishing, global warming
wiped out 14 per cent of the world’s coral reefs between 2009 and 2018,
according to a survey by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, the biggest
ever carried out.
More than half of an US$8 million (S$10.81 million) Catalyst
Science Fund for backing biotechnology tools to help solve conservation’s most
intractable problems is being poured into coral projects.
“Our thinking is the tools we develop for coral will be
generalizable for other marine species,” said Ms Bridget Baumgartner, who
coordinates coral projects at Revive.
“We hope we can easily translate them to problems with kelp,
oysters, sea stars, what have you.”
Genetic projects backed by Revive and Restore elsewhere in
the United States have yielded a black-footed ferret named Elizabeth Ann,
cloned from frozen cells decades old, and which could be the salvation of her
species.
And a yearling called Kurt being cared for in a California
zoo is a resurrected Przewalski wild horse, which had gone extinct.
Though neither are connected to climate change, the
creatures’ existence are key to the group’s argument in favour of their genetic
work.
Certainly genetic tinkering raises concerns, said Stanford
University law and biosciences director Henry Greely, citing potential for
deformations or an altered plant or animal causing unexpected consequences in
the wild.
Yet he sees saving species, including coral, from decimation
as worthy uses of the technology.
“I’m a fan of this approach, if it’s done carefully, with
appropriate regulation and prudence,” Dr Greely said of adding genetic
technology tools to conservation efforts.
Dr Gregory Kaebnick, a scholar at bioethics research
institute The Hastings Centre also supported creature-protecting tweaks, and
noted the risk of a creation running amok was lower than simply failing to
impart durable, effective changes.
“I’m not excited about the prospect of changing coral to let
them survive, but it might be something that we have to do,” he added.
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