Gmo use in the ecosystem.

[noahjsc]

Disclaimer: Sorry if my post is not in the right place or for any mistakes. This is my first post.

I am saying this with the assumption that we are in global change which is causing major extinctions. Also ethics are not the main concern here. I do not want ethics or global warming to be the main topic of discussion. I make the assumption that we cannot stop the changes made by people to the environment.

 

Point of view:

With that aside. In younger grades the ecosystem is taught as being something like a tower made of tiny blocks. Each block being something like and organism or a material. When you remove a block from this tower sometimes it can cause it to fall. This idea represents that each organism in an ecosystem fills a niche and if removed can have catastrophic results. With the changes to the environment caused by humans I believe that we are losing organisms that are incredibly important to ecosystems. I will use coral as an example. Coral plays a major part in reef building, and many species rely on it. The only problem is coral does not like change in temperature. If we lose coral we lose many species of fish which basically destroys the ecosystem.

 

Question:

 

With species dying such as coral that play a major part in the ecosystem. If we can guarantee that they will not survive the changes in the climate. Would it be effective to genetically modify these organisms to increase their ability to survive our changes to the environment to keep the ecosystem in tact?

[Elite Engineer]

Firstly, you have to know what's killing the coral organisms. Is a lower pH killing coral reefs, or perhaps a synthetic chemical or a foreign organism that was introduced to the population?

 

Then you genetically modify the coral so that the antagonistic force cannot harm it. This all works well in a test tube, but relative to the massive size of the oceans and reef populations, its extremely difficult, and may be impossible. It's akin adding ozone to the atmosphere to reduce global warming.

 

Difficulty in accomplishing this boils down to 3 reasons: Cost, keeping the genetic variant consistent among the population, and implementation of the variants. It;s probably possible in small populations near coastlines. However, deep in the ocean its pretty much unrealistic.

 

~EE