GMO Trees: Carbon Absorption Solution

Genetically modified trees are seen as a solution by these scientists to absorb excess carbon in the world.

In grade school, Charles DeLisi had his first indication of changes in the environment. He lived in a very wooded area, with trees filling his neighborhood, which was very fortunate for him since he loved to play in the forest. However, one of the saddest events of his adolescence, as he describes, occurred around the time he entered high school, many of his beloved trees disappeared — cemented over.

Supercharging Trees: Genetic Engineering for Faster Growth and Deeper Roots

According to DeLisi, we are approaching another breaking point where, like his beloved forest, large swaths of nature’s playgrounds will disappear but on a grander scale. 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere every year by Humankind – a rate that could have severe consequences if left unchecked.

He explains that the temperature would increase another .4 to .5 degrees Celsius even if we went to zero (carbon emissions) today, causing a disastrous collapse of the coral system. This collapse equates to massive loss of life — the whole ecology and all the fish and whatnot that rely on coral reefs.

The government’s goal to reach zero net carbon emissions by 2050 is ambitious, according to DeLisi, a biomedical engineer at Boston University. And even if they achieve it, there will still be some emissions needing to be offset. Using methods to capture carbon such as direct air capture — giant machines that vacuum carbon from the atmosphere – dozens of countries, including the U.S., Japan, the U.K., and Germany, aim to offset any remaining greenhouse gas emissions.

But according to DeLisi, a new way to suck much more carbon out of the atmosphere is needed because breaking even isn’t enough. He adds that not doing both won’t get us very far. With genetically modified trees, he wishes to bring “carbon drawdown” technologies into the conversation.

In order to create solutions, like genetically modifying carbon-hungry trees, DeLisi organized a workshop last year with a team of seasoned professionals including, Sir Richard Roberts (biochemist, Nobel laureate, and staunch advocate for GMOs), Val Giddings (a geneticist at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation), and researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. And they are closer to it.

Supercharged Trees, Nature’s Natural Remedies

It’s a simple idea: Enhance the tree’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and use them to combat climate change.

Trees take atmospheric carbon dioxide and transform it via photosynthesis into oxygen and carbon. After that they release the oxygen into the air we breathe and store the carbon in their leaves, roots, and trunk.

But natural carbon storage isn’t permanent. Deforestation and forest fires can release all of it back into the atmosphere. Even insect infestations can cause forests to decay and launch carbon.

An ideal world would balance the process– carbon that enters into the atmosphere comes out, and vice versa. But add in the surplus of carbon dioxide humans emit via industrial processes, like burning fossil fuels or expansive agriculture, and the system is overpowered. Nature can’t sustain.

DeLisi and his team say, why not supercharge trees so they can keep up, by genetically engineering the trees to grow quicker or even have deeper roots?

When it concerns carbon sequestration, age and size issue. The carbon absorption rate accelerates as the tree ages, accumulating the majority of its stored carbon in the last stage of its life. Large, old-growth trees are a number of the biggest carbon storehouses on Earth. The largest 1% of trees store 50% of the carbon caught in trees worldwide. But it might take hundreds or perhaps thousands of years for a new tree to reach that age and size.

Currently, these researchers want to use genetic engineering to increase their growth rate so they could reach “old growth” status in just 20 years to 50 years, absorbing more carbon in less time. Furthermore, carbon saved in origins is entraped beneath the dirt even if the tree is chopped down, dies, or burns. Trees improved with extra-deep roots could stow away more carbon.

An extra: DeLisi claims that genetically modified trees can also be programmed to transform captured carbon into a white calcium carbonate material, which could stop the carbon from being launched again if the tree decays. This product could even be gathered and used as a natural source of raw material for plastic or other sturdy materials.

DeLisi says the biological pathways to convert carbon dioxide into calcium carbonate are already well comprehended– in corals. In theory, scientists could transfer these paths to trees, withdrawing carbon and transforming tree trunks into ultra-hard wood, suitable for buildings and other structures.

Restoring the American Chestnut: GMOs and Gene Editing for Conservation

” If you’re cutting (the trees) down to supply structural wood for buildings, that’s going to secure the carbon away for a quite some period of time,” says Val Giddings, a geneticist at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank working on technological innovation as well as public policy.

” That attenuates the existing carbon reservoir in the atmosphere and buys time for additional, more permanent geological repositories to be established. There’s no question that this is an upgrade over the status quo.”

Creating economic alternatives to fossil fuels will become essential, according to DeLisi. But while he says that while the U.S. could switch over to renewable energy, it will be challenging for developing countries to make the change. They rely on fossil fuels because they are more affordable.

Other solutions, like industrial scrubbers that suck carbon out of the atmosphere, are expensive and less effective. Solar geoengineering– spraying sulfuric acid into the atmosphere to block out the sun’s heat– might have unintended repercussions and does not address the carbon accumulation in the atmosphere. Why not soup up nature’s natural remedy instead?

Some people are already working on making it happen.

Maddie Hall is the founder and CEO of Living Carbon, a startup developing genetically modified poplars and pines efficient in soaking up much more carbon dioxide than ordinary trees.

She says her startup, which is less than two years of ages, is running in “stealth mode.” They’ve already raised millions in venture capital funding. Their work is mostly proprietary; however, she says they already have seedlings in the ground, and the trees will be ready before the end of the year.

Risky Business

But genetically modified organisms have a background of dispute. Some scientists are distressed by the environmental risk as well as they stress over irreversibly changing the forest ecology. The human species has currently tinkered with the planet enough, they say.

Ricarda Steinbrecher, a molecular geneticist, says that despite the developments like CRISPR, which she regards as an “excellent research tool to learn more about genes, their function(s), regulation, interactions and inter-dependencies,” there are threats with genetically engineered trees.

“The possibilities of investigation and understanding are restricted, especially when considering the intricacy not simply of trees, but the ecosystems they are part of, and that across time as well as space,” she stated in an e-mail.

Because trees take so long to grow and are linked with several systems in nature, they are so complex that “currently, no significant and sufficient risk assessment of GE (genetically engineered) trees is feasible,” she wrote in 2008– and she says it still holds today.

Biologist William Powell, the director of the American Chestnut Research & Restoration Program, appreciates these concerns. He states that it is essential to look at the ecological context of a genetically modified tree (and it is required for approval by the USDA, the department that regulates what GMO trees can be released into the wild).

Revolutionizing Plant Modification: GMOs and Gene Editing Offer Safer Solutions

Powell’s work on the American chestnut tree started in 2006. A fungus wiped out the American chestnut, but several roots remained since the fungus can not penetrate the soil. Currently, a new tree can sprout from a root system, but if they ever grow taller than a shrub, the blight eliminates it to the ground again.

To save the species, Powell transferred a crucial gene from the wheat plant to the American chestnut cells. The gene enhances resistance to the fungus that causes the blight.

He is carrying out a collection of environmental examinations to guarantee his modified American chestnut is a bona fide American chestnut: the nuts are equally as nutritious, the fallen leaves don’t harm insects, etc.

So far, so good, he says.

But Powell is distressed about the bad rep GMOs have. Many Americans distrust GMOs, predominantly in food, despite a virtually unanimous scientific consensus that GMOs are safe. As a matter of fact, Powell says, genetic engineering and gene editing have less unexpected repercussions than the old-fashioned means of modifying plants– hybrid breeding.

“We essentially have everything backwards here. The safer way is the one that once people are the most afraid of,” he says.

Before scientists could do genetic engineering and gene editing, farmers and scientists altered a plant’s genes by interbreeding them. But doing so could introduce thousands of additional genes, new variants, and unplanned changes. With CRISPR and other new methods, they can focus on changing one specific gene at a time.

Modern Genetic Engineering: A Safer Path for Improved Crops and Trees

“There are less unintended consequences than the old approaches of people breeding, especially breeding hybrids, where you take two species and cross them. That causes all type of mutations. It mixes genes on species that developed in different environments,” he says.

“(Modern methods are) actually more desirable for things like conservation because you’re keeping the soundness of the tree you’re making the same and just making very small changes,” adding that the same is true for GMO crops.

Initially a GMO rationalist, Val Giddings, one of DeLisi’s team of geneticists, spent four decades “being cautious”– seeking hazards and assessing risks associated with genetically modified trees. Ultimately, like Powell, he hasn’t identified any concerning repercussions.

“I can say that despite a massive amount of blood and treasure invested in searching for peculiar problems associated with the use of these genetic engineering techniques to make improved varieties of crops or livestock, nobody has developed a novel problem,” he says.

“There are possible troubles that might arise that would be related to safety. But none are new to us. Every one of them are familiar from stuff that we’ve done with classical plant breeding,” explaining that if you plant a tree in a dry spell region, and it absorbs up excessive water, then that is an issue.

But it is the sort of problem we know with already.

“The main risk that I see is of not moving fast enough to profit from this opportunity,” he says.

Crops vs. Forests

Martin Bunzl, professor emeritus at Rutgers University, reprises Steinbrecher’s sentiment regarding unknown risks. He says we should be concerned about potential knock-on repercussions of new assortments of trees.

“We don’t know what the interdependence is and what changing the timescale of that interdependence does,” he says. But he’s not anti-GMO– he favors genetically modified crops as a remedy to climate change, in place of trees.

Genetically Modified Crops for Climate Change: Unlocking the Potential of Duckweed and Beyond

Because crops are planted and harvested each year, the timescale is reduced, and, therefore, researching and evaluating the risks involved is more feasible. Additionally, farmers purchase, and plant crops each year, so genetically modified crops already have a built-in distribution plan.

The Harnessing Plants Initiative at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies leads the search for genetically modified crops that target climate change. Recently, they made inroads into understanding the genetic mysteries behind duckweed, the world’s fastest-growing plant. They wish to create next-generation plants enhanced to combat climate change– using unique features like uber-deep roots, pest resistance, and rapid growth rates.

Wolfgang Busch, a plant biologist with the initiative, says that even when crops are harvested, their roots remain in the ground, locking carbon beneath the soil for longer.

He’s non-partisan when it comes to the crops vs. trees debate. He says there is considerable potential to use nature to address the climate crisis by boosting these natural processes

“The more hands-on-deck in this field to use genetic engineering to mitigate minimize change, the better,” he says.