Supercharging Plants and Soils to Remove Carbon From the Atmosphere
Plants are the original carbon capture factories—and a new research program aims to make them better ones by using gene editing. The Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), supported by a $11 million commitment from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), seeks to use CRISPR genome editing to enhance the natural ability of plants and soil microbes to both capture and store carbon from the atmosphere. Along with efforts to reduce existing sources of emissions, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) could play an increasingly important role in reducing the global impact from climate change and reversing its course, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In any discussion of CDR, it is often noted that we already have technologies that do this quite well: plants, microbes, and other living organisms, but they were optimized for a world without large amounts of excess carbon produced by human activities. The IGI project aims to enhance the natural carbon-removal abilities of living organisms to meet the scale of the climate change problem.
Over the past year, CZI has invested in the development of promising technologies to help address climate change at scale as part of an exploration of cutting-edge and emerging climate solutions, including CDR technologies. The IGI program is the latest recipient of support, and one of the first to apply CRISPR genome editing to the worldwide CDR effort.
Dr. Jill Banfield (right) working in California rice fields with her team (Bethany Kolody and Jack Kim) to analyze the soil microbes responsible for both emitting and storing carbon.
“We’re excited to support the Innovative Genomics Institute’s important research into new applications of gene-editing technology,” says CZI co-founder and co-CEO Dr. Priscilla Chan. “This technology has the potential to supercharge the natural abilities of plants, enabling them to pull more carbon out of the atmosphere and store more carbon in their roots and the surrounding soil — providing a new set of innovative tools to address climate change.”
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