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Is Artificial Evolution possible to tackle ecological imbalance due to climate change?

by 
Written by: Nazifa Anjum
(General Member, DUMUNA)

Today the whole world is concerned about climate change and its effect on ecological imbalance. Due to the industrial revolution, there has been a significant amount of land conversion and degradation also followed by environmental pollution. This is one of the major causes for extinction of many species. A total of 17 animal species are extinct in the 21st century and many species are listed as endangered. Mainly because the life that cannot adapt with the changing atmosphere gets extinct and those who survive can do so by a slight change in their genetic design.

Now, the question arises – should we redesign the genetic formula for the species that are about to go extinct? Well, we do have a technology in hand for the idea called ‘CRISPR-Cas9’. This allows the researchers to edit genomes; thus has its application on correcting genetic defects, treating and preventing the spread of diseases, etc. This technology now is the only way to achieve artificial evolution. 

But almost 19,000 species are now listed in the category of ‘threatened’. Also the animal-like migratory birds may not be able to cope up with the sudden change in its genome as it roams in different environments around the world. To trigger artificial evolution we need to redesign all of these species, which might take a whole decade.

Most of the extinction in the 21st century is triggered mainly by human activity. Possible solution to balance the ecology is to keep in check this kind of activity. Again, if we ever have a chance to build a human community on Mars, the technology of CRISPR-Cas9 might come in handy. As Evolution is a long term process that includes every little change like the butterfly effect, the artificial evolution might result in greater imbalance for the planet. But we can hope that it may be possible in the near future.

References:

IUCN red list. Retrieved from  (https://www.iucnredlist.org/)

Ran,A.F, Hsu,D.P, Wright,J, Agarwala,V, Scott.A.D (24th October, 2013). Genome engineering using the CRISPR-Cas9 system. Nature. Retrieved from (https://www.nature.com/articles/nprot.2013.143)

Shwartz, M. Target, delete, repair CRISPR is a revolutionary gene-editing tool, but it’s not without risk. Stanford Medicine. Retrieved from  (https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2018winter/CRISPR-for-gene-editing-is-revolutionary-but-it-comes-with-risks.html )