Chapter 1. Synthetic Biology: Re-engineering the environment - Frontiers 2018/19: Emerging Issues of Environmental Concern

The world is facing unprecedented challenges to a healthy and sustainable future. Habitat destruction, invasive species, and overexploitation are contributing to immense biodiversity loss. Unsustainable, extractive industry practices further burden the environment, and by extension, human welfare. Vector-borne infectious diseases pose a major threat to global health. Rapid climate change is likely to expand the geographical range of tropical diseases and further stress already taxed species and ecosystems. A number of approaches devised to meet these challenges – some proposed and others already implemented – share a common strategy. That is, they depend upon the genetic manipulation of living organisms to acquire new functions that otherwise do not exist in nature, in order to serve human needs.