The Digital Biome: Re-engineering Life on Earth to Survive and Thrive in the 21st Century
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Exponential technologies offer the promise not only of changing the human condition, but of radically altering the face of the planet on which we dwell. Within the next 20 years we will have sequenced the genome of every known species on the earth and tremendously advanced our understanding of how to utilize those genes and reprogram those organisms to alter the biosphere. Biosphere engineering will play a major role in overcoming current environmental and resource challenges, including finite reserves of fossil fuels and looming changes to the earth’s climate. That is just the beginning. An understanding of the complete biome genome will bring tremendous agility in combating future infectious disease outbreaks, in creating new sensors and manufacturing capabilities, and in revolutionizing food. Biosphere engineering and its underlying technologies will allow us to dramatically raise the population carrying capacity of the planet to tens of billions of individuals at least. With effective technology to sculpt the planetary biome, the limits of the number of humans that can live on the planet, and the quality of life of each, at tremendously higher than they appear to be today. This talk will explore some of the lower bounds of what's possible with control of the biome, and what we need to do to survive and overcome our challenges to get there.
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The Digital Biome: Re-engineering Life on Earth to Survive and Thrive in the 21st Century
- 1. The Digital Biome Re-engineering the Ecosystem to Survive and Thrive in the 21s Century Ramez Naam @ramez
- 2. Welcome to the Anthropocene
- 4. Global problems, global risks
- 19. CATCH SOARING
- 21. Fish Tons Per Unit Effort
- 29. Annual Rice Yields in China. Source: 10.1146/annurev-arplant-042809-112206
- 31. Species Loss
- 42. Pathogens and Antibiotic Resistance?(At M. Vassar’s Request)
- 44. Biology as Info Tech
- 49. Goal: 100,000 Genomes by 2020
- 50. 2020: $10 Human Genome
- 55. Knowing is Half the Battle
- 56. The Other Half is Doing
- 57. If the Genome is Digital
- 58. Can We Edit It?
- 64. “When you think of all the things that are made from oil and the chemical industry and the fuel industries — if in the future we could find cells to replace most if not all of these processes, the ideal way would be to do it by direct design.” -- Craig Venter
- 83. 5 Days
- 87. Fresh Water
- 93. 13%
- 94. Increasing Photosynthetic Efficiency for Greater Yield Xin-GuangZhu, Stephen P. Long, and Donald R. Ort, Annual Review of Plant Biology Timeline of boosting photosynthetic efficiency. Source: 10.1146/annurev-arplant-042809-112206
- 96. Winning the Race
- 103. US Energy Spending: One Trillion Dollars You Are Here
- 107. Supply Price Demand Behavior
- 109. Garbage Data
- 110. Perceived Infinite Supply of:
- 112. Ocean CO2 Absorption
- 113. Ocean Fish (at any given time)
- 114. Fresh Water Aquifers
- 115. Garbage Model: Distortions
- 117. Clean Up Our Inputs
- 118. Clean Up Our Model
- 119. Price or Regulate Commons
- 120. Remove Distortions
- 121. Invest in R&D
- 125. Maximize Odds of Success
- 126. Minimize Odds of Catastrophe
- 129. Ramez Naam @ramez
Editor's Notes
- Plankton are near the bottom of the food chain.Corals are responsible for 50% of ocean biodiversity.
- Reefs are responsible for about half of ocean biodiversity.
- Plenty of fish in the sea.
- Average American uses 1600 cubic meters of water per year.A cube 40’ on a side.
- Aral Sea spans Uzbekistan and Kazakstan: 1989-2003
- Aral Sea, 2009. Source: National Geographic
- Olagalla Aquifer
- Endangered species. As a computer scientist I see this as a loss of information with no backup.
- Extinction rate – log scale.
- SARS virus was sequenced in 5 days.At 1AM on April 7, 2003, an isolate of the SARS virus arrived at the Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. Five days later, the lab published the virus sequence for the first time.
- Dawkins: Biology in One Word: Digital
- Venter: Most Important Research Tool: The Computer
- George Church
- Just an example. Relatively few genes took us from wolves to this variety of dogs.In the wild we’ll sequence all sorts of organisms and learn what genes allow some to work in extreme heat, others in extreme cold, others in extreme radiation, and so on.
- Venter, artificial life = Gene Printing, 1.1 million bases
- Let’s start with energy.One of the proposed replacements for fossil fuels is biofuels, using photosynthesis to capture the sun’s energy and then refining it into fuel. After all, all fossil fuels are basically congealed solar energy.Unfortunately, current biofuels haven’t panned out. They’re expensive to refine, they compete with food crops.
- EnterCraig Venter. Why is he talking about fuels? Because Exxon paid his company Synthetic Genomics $600 million to work with them on genetically engineered organisms for biofuels.
- Cyanobacteria (blue green algae) for fuels. 3.5 B years old. Genetic modification to produce variants that produce ethanol, oil, or even hydrogen gas.Source:http://www.ecofriendlymag.com/sustainable-transporation-and-alternative-fuel/the-big-boys-of-industry-move-into-next-generation-algae-fuels/
- Proposed Algae Biofuel facility in Arizona. Doesn’t compete with food crops. Can use very brackish water not suitable for irrigation. Sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere.
- DARPA: Beginning production of biofuel from algae in 2013. Projected price of under $5 / gallon. Part of the goal is to be able to grow fuel in forward areas.
- Now, all of those biofuel pathways go through photosynthesis, which itself has a theoretical peak efficiency of 13%. A more efficient way would be to actually produce electricity.
- Can be harvested by chopping up the plants, and sprayed onto a conductive surface to create a very cheap photovoltaic surface.
- ArborGen GM Eucalyptus – grow twice as fast, less of a protein called lingin.
- What percent change is necessary to offset all industrial CO2 output
- GM Salmon from a company called Aquabounty, have genes inserted from a “pout fish”, grow about 50% faster than normal Salmon, fewer calories consumed vs. calories delivered. Could be our first genetically modified food animal.
- Not an alien probe, not a nanomachine – at least not how you may think of it. This is a Coccolithophore. They’re a family of species that account for about 30% of the calcification – the creation of new shells – that happens in the ocean. And unlike other calcifiers, they actually calcify *more* in high CO2 oceans. Can we borrow their genes?
- Not an alien probe, not a nanomachine – at least not how you may think of it. This is a Coccolithophore. They’re a family of species that account for about 30% of the calcification – the creation of new shells – that happens in the ocean. And unlike other calcifiers, they actually calcify *more* in high CO2 oceans. Can we borrow their genes?
- Most coral damage actually from fishing, sport, and other activities. We’ve been practicing ways to regenerate corals.
- Maldives. Corals were dying. But what we’ve discovered is that there are new growth, growing at 5x the rate of typical coral growth. The same thing happens in waters that are too hot. But not all corals do this. Only a subset. Some of the difference is probably environmental, but some genetic.
- So can we figure out the genes that make some corals regenerate, and transplant those into others?
- Spanish Ibex. Extinct. For 7 minutes were no longer extinct.
- Fresh water is an energy problem. We use a tiny tiny fraction of all water on the planet. Saltwater + energy, can be fresh water.Desalination = 0.77 kwh per cubic meter.Americans use 1600 cubic meters per capita per year.For 9 B people, would be 11 Trillion Kw Hours3 KilaMega9 Giga12 Tera15 Peta= 1.1 * 10^16 watt hoursSun delivers 350,000,000 * 10^12 = 3.5 * 10^20Current Energy Usage = 150,000 Twhours / year = 1.5 x 10^17
- What about food?
- So what about food? Can we further increase food production? C3 Crops: Wheat, rice, potatoes, barley.C4 Crops: maize, sugar cane, millet, and sorghumCurrent photosynthetic efficiency of C3 and C4 plants. Source: 10.1146/annurev-arplant-042809-112206
- Theoretical max efficiency is 13%. Per James Bolton and David Hall. Must stress that we don’t know how to biologically design a system that reaches this efficiency. But that is what a perfect biotech could achieve with photosynthesis.Current photosynthetic efficiency of C3 and C4 plants. Source: 10.1146/annurev-arplant-042809-112206THE MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS, JAMES R. BOLTON’? and DAVID O. HALL, Photochemistry und Photobiology Vol. 53, No. 4. pp. 545-548, 1991
- In addition to whatever tax funded dollars we have, we should also be looking to the free market to fund some of this R&D.
- Assumed that behind Supply and Demand are rational actors who make decisions. Someone with a shrinking supply starts charging more.