plants and animals dying At a rate unprecedented on Earth. Some scientists are looking to outer space for solutions.
The idea is called a lunar biorepository, a facility to maintain and store plant and animal cells. But it will be on the moon, not the Earth.
Why the moon?
“There is no place on Earth that cold,” explained Mary Hagedorn, senior research scientist at the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
Hagedorn has spent the last 20 years researching and theorizing modern methods for protecting coral reefs. She is an expert in cryopreservation, the process of freezing biological material such as animal cells at very low temperatures. This allows her to remain frozen for hundreds of years and still remain alive.
“Imagine if, unfortunately, 90% of the Great Barrier Reef was lost due to climate change. Within 100 years, we could give them back all that diversity,” Hagedorn said.
Her inspiration is the Arctic Svalbard Seed Vault in Norway. This is a biorepository where natural temperatures keep the seeds below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. permafrost. The low temperature and humidity of the storage allows the seeds to survive for a long time.
“Svalbard has done a really great job of saying, ‘Okay, we need to conserve seeds. Everything on Earth depends on seeds. And what are we going to do about that?’” Hagedorn said.
Hagedorn and her team want to do something similar in animal cells, but they need lower temperatures. At the lunar poles, shaded by deep craters, temperatures can drop to below -320 degrees Fahrenheit.
Preserving these animal skin cells, called fibroblasts, allows scientists to convert them into sex cells, a method of cloning animals in the laboratory.
with threats endangered animals Like African elephants, green sea turtles, and big cats, the Smithsonian Institution team proposes that the lunar biorepository would initially include an array of animal species that serve a variety of purposes, including:
- These are animals that change the environment, such as corals, beavers, woodpeckers, and earthworms.
- Pollinators that support food production, such as bees, moths, and bats.
- Animals that live in extremely hot, cold, or acidic environments, such as monarch butterflies, polar bears, and nematodes.
- Organisms that support the web of life on Earth, such as zooplankton, boreal trees, and mosses.
Cryopreserved human cardiac stem cells were also recently sent to the International Space Station.
challenges in space
As an experiment, the Smithsonian Institution collected 10 specimens of Starry Goby, a fish found in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. The vision is to seal these cells in cryogenic packaging and test them under space-like conditions on Earth and then on the space station.
How the Smithsonian plans to create cryopreserved cells and test them in space:
Teams from the National Science Foundation's National Ecological Observatory Network also collect about 100,000 animal cell samples from 81 sites each year. NEON's goal is to expand the cell types used in cryopreservation to include sperm and oocytes found in the ovaries.
A lunar biorepository may be a promising idea for preserving Earth's biodiversity, but the program has its challenges.
One of the most challenging challenges posed by a lunar biorepository is radiation exposure to the samples, the researchers said. Countermeasures against radiation may include antioxidant cocktails as well as providing physical barriers such as water, lead or cement to block radiation.
The temperature of the lunar surface, which can be freezing, is also a problem.
Certain areas of the moon can reach more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit during a lunar day, which is equivalent to about 14 days on Earth. Because crater temperatures in the North and South Poles are much colder, transporting biomaterials can be difficult.
Another challenge is that these areas, known as “permanently shaded areas,” are believed to have large amounts of ice, making them extremely difficult for humans to monitor.
The long-term effects of microgravity on cells can also cause problems.
Some people say finding solutions on the moon shouldn't be a top priority.
“I don’t think that’s the right idea right now,” said Noah Greenwald, director of endangered species at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“I think we need to focus on protecting more of our natural world. “That way we don’t lose species in the first place,” he said.
Decades of Effort
Hagedorn isn't the only scientist working to create a biorepository on the Moon.
In 2021, researchers at the University of Arizona proposed the following concept: Send an ark containing 335 million sperm and egg samples to the moon.
“They are engineers,” Hagedorn said. “So we've got more biologists coming here. We know how to cryopreserve. We've started with samples. But they have a good sense of how to use robots.”
Hagedorn said this is a multi-decade effort and that developing a lunar biorepository will require collaboration from a variety of countries, institutions, cultural groups and other stakeholders.
Greenwald said climate change is finally getting the attention it deserves. endangered It's right there.
“Species are the building blocks of ecosystems. They clean our air, clean our water, regulate our climate, and cycle nutrients. The fact that we are losing species at such a rapid rate really reflects that on all of us. “We should be very concerned that the ecosystems we depend on are being destroyed,” Greenwald said.