Environmental Galenics: large-scale fortification of extant microbiomes with engineered bioremediation agents

Abstract

Contemporary synthetic biology-based biotechnologies are generating tools and strategies for reprogramming genomes for specific purposes, including improvement and/or creation of microbial processes for tackling climate change. While such activities typically work well at a laboratory or bioreactor scale, the challenge of their extensive delivery to multiple spatio-temporal dimensions has hardly been tackled thus far. This state of affairs creates a research niche for what could be called Environmental Galenics (EG), i.e. the science and technology of releasing designed biological agents into deteriorated ecosystems for the sake of their safe and effective recovery. Such endeavour asks not just for an optimal performance of the biological activity at stake, but also the material form and formulation of the agents, their propagation and their interplay with the physico-chemical scenario where they are expected to perform. EG also encompasses adopting available physical carriers of microorganisms and channels of horizontal gene transfer as potential paths for spreading beneficial activities through environmental microbiomes. While some of these propositions may sound unsettling to anti-genetically modified organisms sensitivities, they may also fall under the tag of TINA (there is no alternative) technologies in the cases where a mere reduction of emissions will not help the revitalization of irreversibly lost ecosystems. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ecological complexity and the biosphere: the next 30 years’.

Synthetic Biology─High Time to Deliver?

“…A habitual disregard of what is involved in scale-up is an Achilles’ heel of the whole field. It is one thing to have a smart genetic construct showing a spectacular phenotype in a Petri dish or small bioreactor for a short period of time but a very different thing to have the same at an industrial or even global scale and following rigorous implementation standards. Going from one dimension to the other makes the whole difference between a merely intellectual exercise and a truly transformative development .…”

“…In the modern sense, the scientific and technical field universally known now as Synthetic Biology (SynBio) first took off a little more than 20 years ago in bacteria and yeast (Figure ) and, although it soon reached plants, animals, and cell-free systems, it remains largely microbe-centric. − Notwithstanding this constraint, nothing in biology since the double helix and recombinant DNA revolutions has captured more scientific, philosophical, government, and investor interest than SynBio. − Nor has any other field generated such a vast speculative secondary literature on how it could transform everything from manufacturing, agriculture, and medicine to ecosystems, earth’s climate, and space travel, plus resurrect the Pleistocene paleofauna. − Along the way, much has been promised, implicitly or explicitly. Here, we argue that a good deal of this promise may not be fulfilled unless SynBio stays anchored to its engineering foundations, i.e., applies science, math, and art to design and build workable solutions to real problems.…”

Taking Synthetic Biology to the Seas: From Blue Chassis Organisms to Marine Aquaforming

“…In a stepwise scale-up, the efficacy and safety of engineered biological catalysts could first be tested in a laboratory before moving into mesocosms and finally contained ecosystems, before considering a deployment in the environment. [95] This tested deployment would aim to minimize the risks associated with releasing genetically enhanced microorganisms, while still enabling the spread of the bioremediation agents in the environment (Figure 2).…”

Ecological complexity and the biosphere: the next 30 years

“…Adding an extra function such as secreting a polymer that can enhance water retention, even at low levels, could generate a systems-level improvement and move away the location of an undesirable ecological shift. In general, the potential of microbial biotechnology could be expanded across all the scales outlined in figure 2 , with microorganisms at the core of novel strategies [ 126 ]. The idea that synthetic biology can be a helpful (and even necessary) tool to protect biodiversity has been further actively discussed in conservation goals [ 75 , 113 ] within marine biology.…”