A recent study shows that about 60% of the world’s wildlife has been destroyed since 1970 (CNN article), and humans are almost certainly to blame. There have only been five previous mass extinctions in the 4 billion year history of Earth, and humans have now started the sixth. What can be done? Environmentalists will usually suggest increased conservation (or reduced pollution, or perhaps writing a letter to your political representative). We’re going to need de-extinction, genetic preservation, and bioprinting technologies. We’ll need these exponential technologies not only to counter this present mass-extinction, but also to help us go to the stars and become an interplanetary and interstellar species, as we’ll explain. Incidentally, all of this genetic data will be great opportunities for bioinformatics and data science.
Unfortunately, conservation, education/persuasion, and political letter-writing approaches to halting our ongoing existential mass-extinction threat are all likely to be equally futile. This is because it is very difficult to control and coordinate the activity of billions of humans (many of whom are in denial about the gravity of the situation, or, in some cases, even encouraged to disbelieve the statistics by well-funded special interests). This is the difference between the thinking of the typical academic (who is a benevolent dictator in his or her research group) and practical business thinking, Elon Musk-style. Too many scientists and academics will suggest writing letters to politicians (and the special interests are doing a bit more than merely writing letters to their political representatives) or running for Secretary General of the UN. Another natural instinct to an academic is to teach courses, and try to educate the world’s population on the facts of the problem. (Persuading people is actually very expensive — there are predictive analytics models that can estimate the costs of education and persuasion, and they are quite high! Unfortunately, even worse, there are often competing special interest with huge budgets that will compete and attempt to persuade your target audience of an opposite point of view.)
Rather than running for Secretary General of the UN or finding a similar platform to solve the world’s problems (mostly impossible), we need to focus on things that are extremely difficult but ultimately tractable. As Elon Musk has pointed out, going to Mars is an extremely difficult problem, but is one that is ultimately achievable and straightforward. (Convincing the suspicious people of Earth that various existential crises (e.g., Global Warming) are real threats is already very difficult if not impossible. Going a step further by coordinating effective voluntary responses in the presence of significant incentives for cheating is, in contrast, completely hopeless.)
With the dramatic exponential drop in DNA sequencing, de-extinction technology, or at least genetic preservation, is likely to be a much more practical alternative. It is thought that it will soon be possible to sequence entire animal genomes at trivial costs (say $1000 or even eventually less than $1). The expensive step in the future will likely be obtaining animal samples in the wild to sequence, not the genomic sequencing itself.
Genetic preservation of a species is a little bit trickier than sequencing a single organism. (Or sequencing two organisms for preservation, Noah’s Ark-like.) You need to try to preserve enough of the genetic variation of the wild species that it will be viable once de-extincted. (Computer models might be used to extrapolate the statistical variability of genetic alleles from a smaller genetic sample to simulate a larger population, to a certain extent. A typical estimate is 100 individuals are needed to give a species enough genetic variable to let it survive. Even with simulations to generate a much larger “virtual” genetic population for de-extinction purposes, if the sample size is only 100, important rare genetic alleles might be missed, and other rare traits might be overrepresented. Still, having a representative sample of 100 complete genomes for a now-extinct species is much better than having zero.)
There are other problems. The microme (genetic sequences of microorganisms) turns out to be extremely important for mammals (and presumably other higher organisms). You could argue that humans consist mostly their bacteria. (We’re each surrounded by our own unique cloud of bacteria, and it is now thought mammals like to make physical contact to share benevolent bacteria, among other reasons. Certainly, most of the genetic information that makes up a human is found in gut bacteria and such places, although that DNA isn’t what’s essentially since you can regain bacteria from food and the environment. It is isn’t necessary for a species that’s not extinct. For a long-extinct species, however, the microme might be very different than what is present today in ‘similar’ species. Micromes evolve just as their hosts do. Parasites co-evolve with their hosts to become important symbionts. Lacking that co-evolution, today’s common symbiont might be a deadly parasite in an older organism that has been de-extincted.)
We also don’t yet know everything about symbionts. There is some evidence that certain viruses may be important symbionts in some species, and these would likely be missed in a present-day effort to preserve the microme of an animal. Keep in mind that an entire, extremely important branch of the tree of life, the archaea, were only discovered in the last few decades. So there are likely still some surprises out there.
The proteome of the development environment of the parent may also turn out to be more important than currently appreciated. For an extinct species, of course, this is completely absent, unless some attempt is made to preserve it. (Having the genetic sequence to an extinct animal is sort of like having the operating system software CD to a self-replicating computer that no longer exists. Once you have one, great. But without that first one somehow preserved, you might not have anything to boot and read the CD.) As the salient aspects of the protein development environment are not completely understood, properly preserving it is non-trivial (although not impossible in this age of expression microarray technology and other techniques).
That’s not all that needs to be preserved. Some higher animals, like dolphins and some primates, have been show to have language and culture, just like humans. We wouldn’t be able to completely preserve our own human culture where we usually fully understand the languages. We have yet to decipher dolphin, whale, or chimps language. So, we wouldn’t have a clue how to preserve dolphin culture and language (or even bird language) enough to be able to de-extinct dolphins (and some dolphin and whale species are definitely threatened).
A more practical, immediate application of these technologies is not de-extinction, but rather a recovery from near-extinction. As we mentioned above, keeping a species genetically viable requires 100 or more living (or de-extincted) individuals, not to mention possibly reconstructing their microme, protein development environment, language/culture, etc. If, on the other hand, a small number of individuals of a nearly-extinct species survive (perhaps in a zoo, or some Noah’s Ark-like preservation facility), the de-extinction like technology, together with genetic preservation of a much larger number of individuals, would allow us to reconstruct the species. Remember, true de-extinction technology does not exist; although attempts have been made, no creature has ever successfully been de-extincted even when genetic species or frozen embryos were present. However, given a small (but insufficient) number of surviving individuals, a preserved genetic record of a large population would allow us, especially with future technology, to go from that tiny population and reconstruction a much larger, more genetically diverse and viable one. The existence of a small number of surviving individuals would eliminate the need for working de-extinction technology, as well as reduce or eliminate the need for preservation of the microme, protein development environment, or language/culture of the animal (since the surviving members would preserve at least some of that).
A likely criticism of this kind of technology is that it will create false hope. It will give poachers and other anti-environmental types an excuse to engage in further devastation, using the false excuse that the genomes have been preserved, and de-extinction will someday be possible (de-extinction, of course, has never succeeded). They would argue, it is dangerous to develop de-extinction technology, or preserve try to preserve the genetic sequences of populations of threatened species (ultimately a hopeless task given the huge number of species out there, and the rapid rate at which we humans are causing mass extinction on the planet). It would be much cheaper, and much more effective, to improve existing conservation efforts, rather than give special interests and anti-conservation forces (or simply lazy thinkers) an excuse to wipe out more species (through action or inaction).
Some of this is true. However, it seems we have no choice. It is similar to going to Mars. Mass extinction is an existential threat to our species, but one which we are largely powerless to prevent through conservation. (We cannot convince the world, especially suspicious and impoverished regions, to fully conserve to the extent necessary). What we can do is preserve threatened populations genetically, so that when there numbers dwindle we have the option to resurrect them (albeit perhaps on Mars or in some Virtual Reality simulation. Being able to simulate an organism in Virtual Reality from genetic sequences and other data is a great many years away, but, in theory, it should someday become possible from de novo considerations of physics and Moores’ law.) Like going to Mars, adequate conservation is essentially not in our power, but genetic preservation of threatened species populations, although very hard and expensive, is within our technological ability.
Which brings us to Mars. The noted scientist Craig Venter has suggested a “bio-printer” that, like a 3D printer, could convert a genetic sequence into its equivalent organism. (This is not to be confused with 3D bioprinting of organs, which involves using a 3D printer and cellular ‘ink’ to 3D print living tissue and replacement organs.) Venter’s bio-printer is related to his technology of artificial or synthetic life, where a minimally viable bacteria can have its genome replaced with a computer-stored genome, thereby (hopefully) bio-printing the organism back to life from computer.
The application for going to Mars should be obvious. Even Elon Musk’s largest rocket, the Falcon Heavy, would likely have problems sending a Woolly Mammoth population to Mars. (Recall our title, Woolly Mammoths in spaaaace. And you might want to send them into space. What if you’re on the paleo diet, and have a hankering for a paleo burger on Mars, hmmm? You’d need to Woolly Mammoths there. Obviously, you could store frozen embryos instead of full-grown Mammoths for transport on SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System, but a working Venter-like bio-printer would be a more sophisticated technology.)
A more immediate need for a bio-printer is terraforming. The difficulties scientists have experienced with finding the right mix of microorganisms to manage the atmosphere and geochemistry of experiments like Biosphere 2 have revealed, we don’t fully understand the biological organisms responsible for maintaining Earth’s geochemistry. (These would partially be responsible for the vital, life-sustaining negative feedback mechanisms described by the Gaia Hypothesis.) This means we wouldn’t really know which microorganisms to use (or genetically engineer) to terraform a distant planet to make it Earth-like. We also wouldn’t know how long it would take. Estimates of tens of thousands of years for terraforming have been proposed. (And, on Earth, it has been suggested that the processes and related microorganisms that maintain Earth’s dedicate geochemical balance took 1 billion years, the first ‘boring billion’ of life, to evolve from scratch.)
Bottom line, a large number of microorganisms might be needed to terraform a planet. (And you might want a computer database of such microorganisms, so that you could genetically re-engineer the mix as the terraforming process unfolded). Hence, a bio-printer might be very useful for terraforming.
But there’s another, even more profound reason why a bio-printer would be useful…. Article continues next page.
Article continued from previous page.
But there’s another, even more profound reason why a bio-printer would be useful. Mars is close by, and so it is conceivable (if expensive) to send larger objects to Mars by spaceship. Proxima Centuri is a recently-discovered Earth-like planet only 4.3 light years away in our nearest neighboring star system of Alpha Centuri. (It is Earth-like only in the sense that it is made up of the right materials in the right place around the right star, and thus could eventually be terraformed into something very similar to Earth.) A Russian billionaire is funding a project, Breakthrough Starshot, to use Earth or near-Earth-based lasers to accelerate a tiny nano-spaceship (think nano-satellite) to nearly the speed of light. This will make it possible to reach Proxima Centuri in perhaps 20 years or so, as opposed to hundred of thousands of years for a larger, slower moving spaceship. (Put another way, the technology to send tiny nano-satellites to Proxima Centuri in twenty years may almost exist, whereas the technology to send spaceships that could carry humans or woolly mammoths to Proxima Centuri anytime soon does not yet exist, and may never exist due to laws of physics. Wikipedia has an article on some of the interstellar travel issues. The ship we depicted above can do it in a reasonable among of time for the traveller aboard, but would take tens of thousands of years from the perspective of humans on Earth due to relativistic time-dilutive effects; bio-printing means we could colonize the stars much faster. It means we can avoid subjecting astronauts to severe relativistic time-dilutive effects, where everyone they knew back on Earth would be long-extinct before they arrived. Incidentally, we needed a cool-photo, but these tend to depict large, lumbering craft rather than the nimble, bio-printing, von Neumann nano-spacecraft that we need.)
If you’re sending a nano-satellite to Proxima Centuri, it would be useful to have von Neumann machines like self-replicating 3D printers on board to help build up infrastructure from local materials. The smaller von Neumann machines we know of, small enough to fit on-board a nano-satellite, are bacteria and other microorganisms. So if we can solve the bio-printing and de-extinction problems (and figure out which microorganisms we need for terraforming and maintaining geochemistry), then we may be getting close to having technology that could terraform Proxima Centuri in some reasonable of time (say a century for several, iterative improvements on the initial 20-year nano-satellite trip after getting back telemetry). No one knows how long terraforming a planet with bio-printed bacteria might take (we mentioned some estimates of tens of thousands of years above, but no one really knows). Bacteria are von Neumann machines, and if you recall the film and science-fiction work 2010, author Arthur C. Clarke spent some time in the book justifying that von Neumann systems could very quickly convert Jupiter into a sun. Why would von Neumann systems like bacteria necessary be slow in terraforming Proxima Centuri once the technology has been mastered?
So we might someday be sending woolly mammoths into spaaaace for a future paleo-burger on Proxima Centuri. Someday, we might also use genetically preserved sequences to bring back endangered species to live in virtual reality zoos (surviving in a VR zoo is better than going extinct, although, again, the technology to simulate animals from genetic sequences does not yet exist.)
More realistically, and more near-term, we’ll be preserving genetic information from populations of threatened species. Although likely controversial, this is ultimately the closest thing we’ll have to almost-guaranteeing the future survival of some of these species in the wake of our ongoing human-created mass extinction. (If we don’t destroy the natural world and ourselves first so badly that our technologies become inaccessible to us.)