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“A tree is a computer that is operated with sunlight,” says Peruvian Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio. The biochemist obviously looks at Amazon forests with an engineering view. With his company SpaceTime Ventures, he is currently helping biotechnology start-ups in Brazil to be inspired by nature.
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In April, Castilla-Rubio travelled to Berlin to promote his dream destination at World Bioeconomy Summit: An Eldorado of genome data. The 55-year-old is a cooperator of a new scientific Megavorhabens: Earth Biogenome Project (EBP). Its initiators not only wanted to decipher, catalogue and make use of genome of all trees, explains entrepreneur with verve in Berlin, but also that of all or plants, of animals and fungi. The genetic information should help to save globally endangered biodiversity and at same time to develop global South sustainably. One will “sequence life for life to have a future”, a website of EBP describes this “probably most ambitious proposal in history of biology”.
Is that visionary or rar size megalomaniac? After all, behind project are 25 evolutionary biologists, ecologists, molecular geneticists or botanists from top universities, natural history museums, genomics institutes. Most of m come from USA, individuals from Europe and China. Last week y revealed ir plan in journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. Thus, genomes of 1.5 million known eukaryotes are to be recorded on planet. This is called all higher creatures whose cells have a nucleus. So far, only 0.2 percent have been sequenced, initiators write. They also hope to penetrate terra incognita of up to 13.5 million still uncovered species. 4.7 billion dollars is supposed to cost ten-year-long mammoth project.
If all genomes were n open, researchers hope that development pathways of evolution will be read and functioning of ecosystems better understood. Endangered species could n be obtained more purposefully, indeed ir stocks would be renewed – even by biotechnologically rebuilding m one day. In addition, Erbgutinformationen are to serve as resources for “biobased” products, from bioenergy to biochemicals and materials to new pharmaceuticals.
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This is possible for scientists due to rapid advances in genetic engineering. “Biology is digital and refore accessible to engineer’s design thinking,” says Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio. “In a lab in Boston, you can combine genes of five species from five continents in one yeast to produce a drug.” Syntic biology teams even want to create completely new organisms. The EBP is intended to systematize information bases for this.
This article comes from time No. 19/2018. Here you can read entire output.
All this promises a “multi-trillion-dollar bioeconomy” in Castilla-Rubio’s eyes. The American economy alone has benefited from data of human Genome project with a trillion dollars from new industries and jobs, claims man from Peru. “And now imagine enormous economic value when we have deciphered whole great book of life!”
Pilot region is to become Amazon. South America’s last primeval forests are threatened by depletion and global warming. They have a quarter of global biodiversity on land. To raise ir data, says Castilla-Rubio, ” only development path that no longer destroys forest, is globally competitive and involves people”. The expected profits from this should also benefit countries of origin of biodiversity. To ensure this, Castilla-Rubio builds up a sister project of EBP, earth Bank of codes. Their task is to make all genome data freely accessible and to ensure that private companies share ir knowledge with Governments and indigenous peoples.
