title: Synthetic circuit designs for earth terraformation.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Mounting evidence indicates that our planet might experience runaway effects associated to rising temperatures and ecosystem overexploitation, leading to catastrophic shifts on short time scales. Remediation scenarios capable of counterbalancing these effects involve geoengineering, sustainable practices and carbon sequestration, among others. None of these scenarios seems powerful enough to achieve the desired restoration of safe boundaries.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  We hypothesize that synthetic organisms with the appropriate engineering design could be used to safely prevent declines in some stressed ecosystems and help improving carbon sequestration. Such schemes would include engineering mutualistic dependencies preventing undesired evolutionary processes. We hypothesize that some particular design principles introduce unescapable constraints to the engineered organisms that act as effective firewalls.
  
  
  METHODS
  Testing this designed organisms can be achieved by using controlled bioreactor models, with single and heterogeneous populations, and accurate computational models including different scales (from genetic constructs and metabolic pathways to population dynamics).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our hypothesis heads towards a future anthropogenic action that should effectively act as Terraforming processes. It also implies a major challenge in the existing biosafety policies, since we suggest release of modified organisms as potentially necessary strategy for success.
authors.affiliation: Institució Catalana per a la Recerca i Estudis Avançats-Complex Systems Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 08003, Barcelona, Spain. ricard.sole@upf.edu.|Institut de Biologia Evolutiva, (CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta 37, 08003, Barcelona, Spain. ricard.sole@upf.edu.|Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park road, Santa Fe, NM, 87501, USA. ricard.sole@upf.edu.
authors.forename: Ricard V
authors.initials: RV
authors.lastname: Solé
authors.affiliation: Institució Catalana per a la Recerca i Estudis Avançats-Complex Systems Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 08003, Barcelona, Spain. raul.montanez@upf.edu.|Institut de Biologia Evolutiva, (CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta 37, 08003, Barcelona, Spain. raul.montanez@upf.edu.
authors.forename: Raúl
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Montañez
authors.affiliation: Institució Catalana per a la Recerca i Estudis Avançats-Complex Systems Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 08003, Barcelona, Spain. salvador.duran@upf.edu.|Institut de Biologia Evolutiva, (CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta 37, 08003, Barcelona, Spain. salvador.duran@upf.edu.
authors.forename: Salva
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Duran-Nebreda
mesh_terms: D019149:Bioreactors; D057965:Carbon Sequestration; D057231:Climate Change; D019295:Computational Biology; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D017753:Ecosystem; D008954:Models, Biological; D030781:Organisms, Genetically Modified / Q000502:physiology*; D013559:Symbiosis