Genetically Modified Trees are Seen as a Solution by These Scientists to Absorb Excess Carbon in the World

In grade school, Charles DeLisi had his first indication of changes in the environment. He lived in a very wooded area, with trees filling his neighborhood, which was very fortunate since he loved to play in the forest. However, one of the saddest events of his adolescence, as he describes, occurred around the time he entered high school, several of his beloved trees disappeared — cemented over.

According to DeLisi, we are approaching another breaking point where, like his beloved forest, large swaths of nature’s playgrounds will disappear but on a grander scale. Forty billion tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere every year by Humankind – a rate that could have severe consequences if left unchecked.

He explains that the temperature would increase another .4 to .5 degrees Celsius even if we went to zero (carbon emissions) today, causing a disastrous collapse of the coral system. This collapse equates to massive loss of life — the whole ecology and the fish and whatnot that rely on coral reefs.

The government’s aim to reach zero net carbon emissions by 2050 is ambitious, according to DeLisi, a biomedical engineer at Boston University. Furthermore, even if they achieve it, some emissions will still need to be offset. Using methods to capture carbon such as direct air capture — giant machines that vacuum carbon from the atmosphere – dozens of countries, including the U.S., Japan, the U.K., and Germany, aim to neutralize any remaining greenhouse gas emissions.

However, according to DeLisi, a new way to suck much more carbon out of the atmosphere is needed because breaking even is not enough. He adds that not doing both will not get us very far. With genetically modified trees, he wishes to bring “carbon drawdown” technologies into the conversation.

In order to create solutions, like genetically modifying carbon-hungry trees, DeLisi organized a workshop last year with a team of seasoned professionals including, Sir Richard Roberts (biochemist, Nobel laureate, and staunch advocate for GMOs), Val Giddings (a geneticist at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation), and researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Moreover, they are closer to it.

Supercharged Trees, Nature’s Natural Remedies

It is a simple idea: Enhance the tree’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and use them to combat climate change.

Trees absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide and transform it through photosynthesis into oxygen and carbon. After that, they release the oxygen into the air we breathe and store the carbon in their leaves, roots, and trunk.

However, natural carbon storage is not permanent. Deforestation and forest fires can release all of it back into the atmosphere. Even insect plagues can cause forests to decay and launch carbon.

An ideal world would balance the process– carbon that enters into the atmosphere comes out, and vice versa. However, add the surplus of carbon dioxide humans emit via industrial processes, like burning fossil fuels or expansive agriculture, and the system is overpowered. Nature cannot sustain.

DeLisi and his team wonder, why not supercharge trees to keep up by genetically engineering the trees to grow quicker or even have deeper roots?

When it concerns carbon sequestration, age, and size issues, the carbon absorption rate increases as the tree ages, most of its stored carbon in the last phase of its life, large, old-growth trees are a number of the biggest carbon storehouses on Earth. The largest 1% of trees store 50% of the carbon caught in trees worldwide. However, a new tree might take hundreds or perhaps thousands of years to reach that age and size.

Currently, these researchers want to use genetic engineering to increase their growth rate to reach “old growth” status in just 20 years to 50 years, absorbing more carbon in less time. Furthermore, carbon saved in origins is entrapped beneath the dirt even if the tree is chopped down, dies, or burns. Trees improved with extra-deep roots could stow away more carbon.

An extra: DeLisi claims that genetically modified trees can also be programmed to transform captured carbon into a white calcium carbonate material, which could stop the carbon from being relaunched if the tree decays. This product could even be gathered and used as a natural raw material source for plastic or other sturdy materials.

DeLisi says the biological pathways to convert carbon dioxide into calcium carbonate are already well comprehended– in corals. In theory, scientists could transfer these paths to trees, withdrawing carbon and transforming tree trunks into ultra-hard wood, appropriate for buildings and other structures.

“If you are cutting (the trees) down to supply structural wood for buildings, that is going to secure the carbon away for quite some time,” says Val Giddings, a geneticist at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank working on technological innovation as well as public policy.

“That deflates the existing carbon reservoir in the atmosphere and saves time for additional, more permanent geological repositories to be established. There is no question that this is an upgrade over the status quo.”

Creating economic options for fossil fuels will become essential, according to DeLisi. However, while he says that while the U.S. could switch over to renewable energy, it will be challenging for developing countries to make the change. They rely on fossil fuels because they are more affordable.

Other solutions, like industrial scrubbers that absorb carbon from the atmosphere, are expensive and less effective. Solar geoengineering– spraying sulfuric acid into the atmosphere to block out the sun’s heat– might have unintended repercussions and does not address the carbon accumulation in the atmosphere. Why not use nature’s natural remedy instead?

A few people are already working on it.

Maddie Hall is the founder and CEO of Living Carbon, a startup developing genetically modified poplars and pines efficient in soaking up much more carbon dioxide than ordinary trees.

She says her startup, less than two years of age, is running in “stealth mode.” They have already raised millions in venture capital funding. Their work is mostly proprietary; however, she says that they already have seedlings in the ground, and before the end of the year, the trees will be ready.

Risky Business

Nevertheless, genetically modified organisms have a background of the dispute. Some scientists are distressed by the environmental risk, and they stress over irreversibly changing the forest ecology. The human species has currently tinkered with the planet enough, they say.

Ricarda Steinbrecher, a molecular geneticist, says that despite the developments like CRISPR, which she regards as an “excellent research tool to learn more about genes, their function(s), regulation, interactions, and inter-dependencies,” there are threats with genetically engineered trees.

“The possibilities of investigation and understanding are restricted, especially when considering the intricacy not simply of trees, but the ecosystems they belong, and that through time and space,” she stated in an e-mail.

Since trees grow very slowly and are linked with several systems in nature, they are so complex that “currently, no significant and sufficient risk assessment of GE (genetically engineered) trees is feasible,” she wrote in 2008– and she says it still holds today.

Biologist William Powell, the American Chestnut Research & Restoration Program director, appreciates these concerns. He states that it is fundamental to look at the ecological context of a genetically modified tree (is required for approval by the USDA, the department that regulates what GMO trees can be released into the wild).

Powell’s work on the American chestnut tree started in 2006. A fungus wiped out the American chestnut, but several roots remained since the fungus could not penetrate the soil. Currently, a new tree can sprout from a root system, but if it ever grows taller than a shrub, the blight eliminates it to the ground again.

Powell transferred a crucial gene from the wheat plant to the American chestnut cells to save the species. The gene improves resistance to the fungus that causes the blight.

He is carrying out a collection of environmental examinations to guarantee his modified American chestnut is a legitimate American chestnut: the nuts are equally as nutritious, the fallen leaves do not harm insects, etc.

So far, so good, he says.

However, Powell is distressed about the lousy rep GMOs have. Many Americans distrust GMOs, predominantly in the food, despite a virtually unanimous scientific consensus that GMOs are safe. As a matter of fact, Powell says, genetic engineering and gene editing have less unexpected repercussions than the old-fashioned means of modifying plants– hybrid breeding.

“We essentially have everything backward here. The safest way is the one that once people are the most afraid of,” he says.

Before scientists managed to do genetic engineering and gene editing, farmers and scientists altered a plant’s genes by interbreeding them. However, doing so could introduce thousands of additional genes, new variants, and unplanned changes. With CRISPR and other new methods, they can focus on changing one particular gene at a time.

“There are fewer unintended consequences than the old approaches of people breeding, especially breeding hybrids, where you take two species and cross them. That causes all types of mutations. It combines genes on species that developed in different environments,” he says.

“(Modern methods are) more desirable for things like conservation because you are keeping the soundness of the tree you are making the same and just making minimal changes,” adding that the same is true for GMO crops.

Initially, a GMO rationalist, Val Giddings, one of DeLisi’s team of geneticists, spent four decades “being cautious”– seeking hazards and assessing risks associated with genetically modified trees. Ultimately, like Powell, he has not identified any concerning repercussions.

“I can say that despite a massive amount of blood and treasure invested in searching for peculiar problems associated with the use of these genetic engineering techniques to make improved varieties of crops or livestock, nobody has developed a novel problem,” he says.

“There are possible troubles that might arise that would be related to safety. However, none are new to us. Every one of them is familiar from stuff that we have done with classical plant breeding,” explaining that if you plant a tree in a dry spell region, and it absorbs up excess water, then that is an issue.

However, it is the sort of problem we know with already.

“The main risk that I see is of not moving fast enough to profit from this opportunity,” he says.

Crops vs. Forests

Martin Bunzl, professor emeritus at Rutgers University, reprises Steinbrecher’s sentiment regarding unknown risks. He says we should be worried about potential knock-on repercussions of new assortments of trees.

“We do not know what the interdependence is and what changing the timescale of that interdependence does,” he says. However, he is not anti-GMO– he favors genetically modified crops as a remedy to climate change in place of trees.

Because crops are planted and harvested each year, the timescale is reduced, and, therefore, researching and evaluating the risks involved is more feasible. Additionally, farmers purchase and plant crops each year, so genetically modified crops already possess a built-in distribution plan.

The Harnessing Plants Initiative at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies leads the search for genetically modified crops that target climate change. Recently, they made progress in understanding the genetic mysteries behind duckweed, the world’s fastest-growing plant. They wish to create next-generation plants enhanced to combat climate change– using unique features like uber-deep roots, pest resistance, and rapid growth rates.

Wolfgang Busch, a plant biologist with the initiative, says that their roots remain in the ground even when crops are harvested, locking carbon beneath the soil for longer.

He is non-partisan when it comes to the crops vs. trees debate. He says there is tremendous potential to use nature to address the climate crisis by boosting these natural processes.

“The more hands-on-deck in this field to use genetic engineering to mitigate change, the better,” he says.

Originally published on Freethink.com. Read the original article.