Sep 28, 2025 08:41 PM
https://aeon.co/essays/should-we-interve...ing-nature
EXCERPTS: Assisted evolution depends on the collaboration between reef scientists and traditional owners. But what if there was a truly empyrean technology – one that, effectively, could remake entire ecosystems with a single gesture?
Kevin Esvelt is a biologist who has shown this is possible – if we so choose. One day in 2013, Esvelt realised that he could solve endemic ecological problems by creating CRISPR edits that would pass from one generation to the next. Gene drives are elements in a genome whose heritable potential is enhanced. By exploiting this strain of bias in the system, Esvelt realised he could build a synthetic gene drive: a DNA-editing machine that, once added to the genome, would recur in each succeeding generation.
The power of a synthetic gene drive is difficult to overstate. Used for good, it could spread heat resistance through coral populations or immunity to anthropogenic diseases, or eradicate introduced predators; used for ill, it could become a terrifying biological weapon. A gene drive could be an extinction engine, giving the power of life or death over entire species to whoever wields it.
[...] Editing cattle to withstand heat may fail the test, if our motivation is simply to keep eating beef. This would surely diminish our relationship in a wider sense, perpetuating a scenario of profound ecological imbalance, where livestock make up two-thirds of mammalian biomass and leading to further destruction of forest ecosystems to make way for pasture.
But some changes foster relation: editing American chestnut trees with a gene derived from wheat allows them to coexist with a fungal pathogen that has nearly wiped out the entire chestnut population. (Although transgenic chestnuts perform poorly in the wild – the wheat gene, which produces an enzyme that suppresses the fungus, also reduces the trees’ ability to withstand drought – illustrating the profound difficulties of successfully editing a species’ genome.)
Using gene editing to help tropical corals withstand bleaching would also sustain the thousands of species that co-exist with reefs. Even if this required using genetic material from an entirely different species, the imposition on coral genomes would be felt by countless other species as a continuation, a furtherance of life... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Assisted evolution depends on the collaboration between reef scientists and traditional owners. But what if there was a truly empyrean technology – one that, effectively, could remake entire ecosystems with a single gesture?
Kevin Esvelt is a biologist who has shown this is possible – if we so choose. One day in 2013, Esvelt realised that he could solve endemic ecological problems by creating CRISPR edits that would pass from one generation to the next. Gene drives are elements in a genome whose heritable potential is enhanced. By exploiting this strain of bias in the system, Esvelt realised he could build a synthetic gene drive: a DNA-editing machine that, once added to the genome, would recur in each succeeding generation.
The power of a synthetic gene drive is difficult to overstate. Used for good, it could spread heat resistance through coral populations or immunity to anthropogenic diseases, or eradicate introduced predators; used for ill, it could become a terrifying biological weapon. A gene drive could be an extinction engine, giving the power of life or death over entire species to whoever wields it.
[...] Editing cattle to withstand heat may fail the test, if our motivation is simply to keep eating beef. This would surely diminish our relationship in a wider sense, perpetuating a scenario of profound ecological imbalance, where livestock make up two-thirds of mammalian biomass and leading to further destruction of forest ecosystems to make way for pasture.
But some changes foster relation: editing American chestnut trees with a gene derived from wheat allows them to coexist with a fungal pathogen that has nearly wiped out the entire chestnut population. (Although transgenic chestnuts perform poorly in the wild – the wheat gene, which produces an enzyme that suppresses the fungus, also reduces the trees’ ability to withstand drought – illustrating the profound difficulties of successfully editing a species’ genome.)
Using gene editing to help tropical corals withstand bleaching would also sustain the thousands of species that co-exist with reefs. Even if this required using genetic material from an entirely different species, the imposition on coral genomes would be felt by countless other species as a continuation, a furtherance of life... (MORE - missing details)