Related papers: Synthetic circuit designs for Earth terraformation
The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology is rapidly accelerating the pace of biological discovery and engineering. AI techniques, such as large language models and biological design tools, are enabling the…
With the increasing urgency of climate change's impacts and limited success in reducing emissions, "geoengineering," or the artificial manipulation of the climate to reduce warming rates, has been proposed as an alternative short-term…
In the past several years, scientists have issued a series of warnings about the threats of climate change and other forms of environmental disruption. Here, we provide a scientists' warning on how technology affects these issues.…
Essential insights on the characterization and quality of a detectable biosphere are gained by analyzing the effects of its environmental parameters. We compiled environmental and biological properties of the Phanerozoic Eon from various…
Unprecedented imbalances and growing human impacts characterize the Anthropocene. It highlights the urgency of better choices, and the perspectives outlined here can inform our decision-making process. The Biocentric-Technological way…
Several theoretical models predict that spatial patterning increases ecosystem resilience. However, these predictions rely on simplifying assumptions, such as assuming isotropic and infinitely large ecosystems, and empirical evidence…
The experiment of exo-ecosystem and the exploration of extraterrestrial habitability aims to explore the adaptation of terrestrial life in space conditions for the manned space program and the future interstellar migration, which shows…
Artificial swarm systems have been extensively studied and used in computer science, robotics, engineering and other technological fields, primarily as a platform for implementing robust distributed systems to achieve pre-defined…
The complexity of an ecological community can be distilled into a network, where diverse interactions connect species in a web of dependencies. Species interact not only with each other but indirectly through environmental effects, however…
Engineered systems are designed to deftly operate under predetermined conditions yet are notoriously fragile when unexpected perturbations arise. In contrast, biological systems operate in a highly flexible manner; learn quickly adequate…
In our modeling of the long-term carbon cycle we find potential multiple steady-states in Phanerozoic climates. We include the effects of biotic enhancement of weathering on land, organic carbon burial, oxidation of reduced organic carbon…
Synthetic biology is a recent area of biological engineering, whose aim is to provide cells with novel functionalities. A number of important results regarding the development of control circuits in synthetic biology have been achieved…
A hard difficulty in Astrobiology is the precise definition of what life is. All living beings have a cellular structure, so it is not possible to have a broader concept of life hence the search for extraterrestrial life is restricted to…
At a time when humanity has achieved global dominance at a scale that was previously thought impossible, it might also face an existential threat due to the consequences of that overwhelming influence on our common home, the Earth System…
Rapid anthropogenic environmental changes, including those due to habitat contamination, degradation, and climate change, have far-reaching effects on biological systems that may outpace animals' adaptive responses (Radchuk et al., 2019).…
The stability of Earth's climate on geological timescales is enabled by the carbon-silicate cycle that acts as a negative feedback mechanism stabilizing surface temperatures via the intake and outgas of atmospheric carbon. On Earth, this…
Climate change is the long-term shift in global weather patterns, largely caused by anthropogenic activity of greenhouse gas emissions. Global climate temperatures have unmistakably risen and naturally occurring climate variability alone…
Over the past century, atmospheric methane levels have nearly doubled, posing a significant threat to ecosystems. Despite this, studies on its direct impact on species interactions are lacking. Although bioaccumulation theory explains the…
AI-enabled synthetic biology has tremendous potential but also significantly increases biorisks and brings about a new set of dual use concerns. The picture is complicated given the vast innovations envisioned to emerge by combining…
A primary motivation for our research in Digital Ecosystems is the desire to exploit the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems. Ecosystems are thought to be robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex,…