Living Carbon is a startup funded with $36 million that just planted a forest of genetically modified trees to absorb more carbon. Living Carbon is a San Francisco-based biotechnology company that produced genetically modified poplars. The new trees are intended to be a large-scale solution to climate change.
The company’s researchers used a crude technique known as the gene gun method, which essentially blasts foreign genes into the trees’ chromosomes. In formal letters to the USDA the company explained what it was doing; the agency replied that, because the resulting trees had not been exposed to and did not contain genes from a plant pest, they were not subject to regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency regulates biotech plants that produce their own pesticides, and the Food and Drug Administration examines anything humans might consume. Living Carbon’s trees do not fit into either of these categories, so they could be planted without any further formal studies.
Donald Ort is a University of Illinois geneticist whose plant experiments helped inspire Living Carbon’s technology. Ort says that greenhouse results may or may not translate to success in the real world. In 2019, Dr. Ort and his team announced that they had genetically hacked tobacco plants to photosynthesize more efficiently. Normally, photosynthesis produces a toxic byproduct that a plant must dispose of, wasting energy. The Illinois researchers added genes from pumpkins and green algae to induce tobacco seedlings to instead recycle the toxins into more sugars, producing plants that grew nearly 40 percent larger. There are 3 trillion trees in the world. If trees were 40% larger then they would absorb about a trillion extra tons of CO2. This would offset all of the extra CO2 that is still in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution started over 150 years ago.
Modifications have improved how the trees conduct photosynthesis.
Co-founder Patrick Mellor was researching whether trees could be engineered to produce decay-resistant wood. He joined with Ms. Hall who was working at OpenAI. They recruited Yumin Tao, a synthetic biologist who had previously worked at the chemical company DuPont. He and others retooled Dr. Ort’s genetic hack for poplar trees. Living Carbon then produced engineered poplar clones and grew them in pots.
I, Brian Wang, personally met Patrick Mellor at a workshop to brainstorm how to use trees and plants to offset climate change.
The modified poplar trees grew more than 53 percent faster than non-modified ones over five months in the greenhouse. [Enhanced photosynthetic efficiency for increased carbon assimilation and woody biomass production in hybrid poplar INRA 717-1B4]
Research Conclusions
The application of synthetic biology techniques in woody plant species for photosynthesis enhancement with the goal of greatly enhancing trees’ ability to draw down atmospheric CO2 has not been reported prior to this work. Here, from two separate growth experiments we demonstrated the successful introduction of a photorespiration bypass pathway into a tree species, resulting in increased biomass for the first time. A lead transgenic event with successful expression of the bypass pathway genes showed increased photosynthetic efficiency, leading to 35%–53% more above-ground dry biomass accumulation over four months of growth in a controlled environment, equivalent to 17%–27% more CO2 fixation from the air. To our knowledge, this is the first time such engineering has been attempted in a tree species for the purpose of carbon drawdown. Our results provided a proof of concept for photosynthesis enhancement in trees and opened the door for engineering trees to help combat climate change. Biological systems are powerful when it comes to carbon drawdown and storage, but at the same time, are complex. It is a challenging goal to engineer trees to make a meaningful impact on climate change. Utilization of the growing knowledge base to test potential biotechnology strategies in trees is a good start.
The gene gun-modified poplars avoided a set of federal regulations of genetically modified organisms that can stall biotech projects for years.
They planted 5000 modified trees on the land of Vince Stanley. He is a farmer with 25,000 forested acres in Georgia’s pine belt. Living Carbon’s “elite seedlings” will allow him to grow bottomland trees in 25-30 years instead of 50-60 years.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Was any thought given to what impact an new super tree would have on the ecology. Can these trees reproduce and take over given their superior growth characteristics?
This can probably only fill in a niche to remove large scale carbon from the air. The last thing we need is another monoculture to solve climate change… And, @Brett, ocean acidification (Yes that’s right, oceans slowly become like carbonated soda which corals don’t like due to elevated human induced co2 levels).
Reforestation to acceleratedly remove carbon from the air should only be done if also biodiversity is retained or increased, as biodiversity is already suffering the most from aggregated climate extremes like heatwaves, droughts, excessive downpours etc.
Also you don’t want to grow a matchbox that catches fire by the first heatwave then all its carbon offsets are in vain.
Also consider that poplar wood is has its niche, but it’s not the most desired timber either.
These forests need to be harvested as new wood grows faster then older trees. Better then to store those harvested trees then as construction material for a few decades.
So ye, I think it can be a stopgap solution in certain places, until we get very cheap energy to synthetically start removing carbon from the air on a massive scale later this century.
That very cheap energy could actually also be used to desalinize sea water to irrigate parts of the Sahara, Australia, Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Namibia, horn of Africa etc. to also make areas green, not as a reason to get carbon out of the air, but just for the sake of growing food to support local communities and restore ecosystems.
maybe it would be also about salt water desalination (or reducing salination levels) and to reforest dry areas with solar power support(?)
or e.g. Red Mangrove, Rhizophora mangle for salt water levels up to 9% between 30°S and 30°N(?)
Though I don’t disagree with the notion of tweaking various species to get a greater level of performance out of them that is aligned with humanity’s current pro-civilization (pro-growth, pro-technology) methodology, it seems kind of simplistic to ‘flood’ a region with a limited selection. As with other invasive species, there has to be some kind of disruption or re-balancing of the various elements of the current eco-system it accesses. I would never imply that Nature was perfect (or even near) and that it had sorted out the most optimized set-up for all the various eco-systems — but Nature works in a more systematic way. The various eco-systems worldwide are pretty much self-supporting/ robust along their boundaries. Almost all generic eco-system types have been cataloged at a very high level of precision with the network of major species that make them well defined. That is the way We need to work to affect some type of change – agriculture, complexity (quantity and quality of species), eco-system optimization, making ‘useful’ eco-systems more robust (mangroves, river/ lake shores, grasslands, etc) that provide water purification, anti-erosion, humidity and wind moderation, etc.
GMO plants are designed to take care only of themselves. They are not part of the the creation, but a disruption of it on many levels. We need to know what we can use and what we cannot in order to heal the planet. Air pollution not only destroys ours and other beings health, but is also much more significant factor in global warming than greenhouse gases.
According to the heavenly insights of the Medical Medium.
While you come off as a complete nutcase, you are half right. GMO plants are not “designed to take care only of themselves”, that’s idiotic. They fit a niche we perceive to exist, and if introduced to the wild would carve one out if possible. Every single organism does the same, modified by human hands or not.
The issue with relying on poplar forests from a single stock is the monoculture problem. A pest will do as mentioned above, and find its niche in our nice climate change solution. Because it’s a monoculture, the pest will thrive and multiply faster than it would in a more rounded system, and wreak havoc. Basically, this just needs replicating in other trees that coexist with poplar in the wild, and with more poplar samples to introduce genetic diversity. It’s a good start.
I don’t think it’s that urgent to suck out of the atmosphere all that CO2 we barely put back, but enhanced photosynthetic efficiency for food crops would be marvelous.
In the spirit of Cato the Elder, I think I’m going to start appending this to every comment.
“Brian figere debet autofill bug!”
Just a shame that along with that CO2, we also get a temperature rise which is already causing all kinds of havoc and will only increase as the CO2 conc. rises. Don’t take my word for it, just read the scientific literature (as apposed to political propaganda).
The scientific literature says that there’s a temperature rise that’s minor compared to the difference between two hours on the same day, and which mostly consists of slightly milder winters and balmier nights. It’s the political propaganda that’s insisting on “havoc”.
Well I suggest you read more of the science because that temp rise you are talking about is actually a global average. Eg locations in Antarctica have recently recorded temperatures 70C above normal. For perspective, the global average temp difference between the last Ice Age and preindustrial times is only around 4C.
It is clear from your comment you know nothing about it and yet dismiss it with such conviction. Why let yourself become so politicized?
The reality is that there has always been and will always be (reasonably) ‘havoc’. Disaster. Famine (food source crash). Heat wave. Flood. World-girdling ash coverage to damage natural things. Ice Ages. Ice retreats. Earthquakes. Huge swings in bio-diversity/-quantity. etc. etc. All non-human dramas occurring over the millenia and prior epochs.
The problem is that the ‘hysterical classes’ seem to have identified their perfect world (pre-industrial – read: low human affect) and that All must be done to return us to That irrespective of affect to civilization growth, natural mechanisms already occurring, the idea that ‘alleged Goldilocks time’ wasn’t the time of maximum species or ‘natural harmony’, etc. etc. Arbitrary. Completely arbitrary.
It is hard to understand why these people think that is a better world; that it is easy to obtain a viable, pre-industrial-type (but with current green tech) nature-harmonious civilization as they seem to imply, and that wealth growth and mod-technology are anti-thetical to that end. At the end of the day, Anti-Emissions rhetoric is just a form of underclass malcontentedness and anti-establishment anarchy. There is no evidence that ANY policy would just get these people to shut-up and ‘get back to a full-day/ life of work’. It’s simply rioting and complaining for Fun and Profit.
bro wtf did i just read. all those words to say…i truly don’t know. nothing?
how about this. care about the earth that birthed you, and go touch grass 🙂