Opinion | Open Access

Volume 2020 |Article ID 1016207 | https://doi.org/10.34133/2020/1016207

The Role of Synthetic Biology in Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Reduction: Prospects and Challenges

Charles DeLisi ,¹ Aristides Patrinos ,² Michael MacCracken,³ Dan Drell,⁴ George Annas,⁵ Adam Arkin,⁶ George Church,⁷ Robert Cook-Deegan,⁸ Henry Jacoby,⁹ Mary Lidstrom,¹⁰ Jerry Melillo,¹¹ Ron Milo,¹² Keith Paustian,¹³ John Reilly,¹⁴ Richard J. Roberts,¹⁵ Daniel Segrè,¹⁶ Susan Solomon,¹⁷ Dominic Woolf,¹⁸ Stan D. Wullschleger,¹⁹ and Xiaohan Yang²⁰

¹Department of Biomedical Engineering and Program in Bioinformatics, College of Engineering, Boston University, Boston MA 02215, USA
²The NOVIM Group, Kohn Hall, UC Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
³Climate Institute, Washington, DC, USA
⁴Department of Energy, Washington, DC, USA
⁵Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health, School of Medicine, Boston University, USA
⁶Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley CA, USA
⁷Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge MA, USA
⁸School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University, Barrett & O’Connor Washington Center, 1800 I Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006, USA
⁹Sloan School of Management, MIT, Cambridge MA, USA
¹⁰Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle Washington, USA
¹¹The Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, USA
¹²Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
¹³Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO 80523, USA
¹⁴MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, MIT, Cambridge MA, USA
¹⁵New England Biolabs, Beverly MA, USA
¹⁶Department of Biology and Program in Bioinformatics, Boston University, Boston MA 02215, USA
¹⁷Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT, Cambridge MA, USA
¹⁸Soil and Crop Sciences Section, School of Integrated Plant Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca NY, USA
¹⁹Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge TN, USA
²⁰Biosciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

Abstract

The long atmospheric residence time of CO2 creates an urgent need to add atmospheric carbon drawdown to CO2 regulatory strategies. Synthetic and systems biology (SSB), which enables manipulation of cellular phenotypes, offers a powerful approach to amplifying and adding new possibilities to current land management practices aimed at reducing atmospheric carbon. The participants (in attendance: Christina Agapakis, George Annas, Adam Arkin, George Church, Robert Cook-Deegan, Charles DeLisi, Dan Drell, Sheldon Glashow, Steve Hamburg, Henry Jacoby, Henry Kelly, Mark Kon, Todd Kuiken, Mary Lidstrom, Mike MacCracken, June Medford, Jerry Melillo, Ron Milo, Pilar Ossorio, Ari Patrinos, Keith Paustian, Kristala Jones Prather, Kent Redford, David Resnik, John Reilly, Richard J. Roberts, Daniel Segre, Susan Solomon, Elizabeth Strychalski, Chris Voigt, Dominic Woolf, Stan Wullschleger, and Xiaohan Yang) identified a range of possibilities by which SSB might help reduce greenhouse gas concentrations and which might also contribute to environmental sustainability and adaptation. These include, among other possibilities, engineering plants to convert CO2 produced by respiration into a stable carbonate, designing plants with an increased root-to-shoot ratio, and creating plants with the ability to self-fertilize. A number of serious ecological and societal challenges must, however, be confronted and resolved before any such application can be fully assessed, realized, and deployed.