Planetary biotechnospheres, biotechnosignatures and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

The concept of planetary intelligence as collective intelligence is used to consider possible evolutionary paths of biotechnospheres that emerge on the intersection of the technosphere with the biosphere and support coupling of the technosphere with the biosphere, thus affecting planetary evolution. In mature biotechnospheres, the intelligence of technologies and the intelligence of life forms, including engineered life forms, could act in concert to perform various tasks (e.g. monitoring planetary biospheres and environments; restoring planetary environments and biodiversity; steading planetary environments; providing support for space missions; terraforming cosmic objects). Space exploration can expand biotechnospheres beyond planets and create cosmic ecosystems encompassing planets and other cosmic objects; biotechnospheres, spacecraft and the environments of near-planetary, interplanetary space or interstellar space. Humankind, other civilizations or their intelligent machines may produce biotechnosignatures (i.e. observables and artefacts of biotechnospheres) in the Solar System and beyond. I propose ten possible biotechnosignatures and strategies for the search for these biotechnosignatures in situ and over interstellar distances. For example, if a non-human advanced civilization existed and built biotechnospheres on Earth in the past, its biotechnospheres could use engineered bacteria and the descendants of that bacteria could currently exist on Earth and have properties pertaining to the functions of the ancient bacteria in the biotechnospheres (such properties are proposed and discussed); intelligent technologies created by the ancient civilization could migrate to the Solar System's outer regions (possible scenarios of their migration and their technosignatures and biotechnosignatures are discussed); these two scenarios are described as the Cosmic Descendants hypothesis. Interstellar asteroids, free-floating planets, spacecraft and objects gravitationally bound to flyby stars might carry extraterrestrial biotechnospheres and pass through the Solar System. In connection to the fate of post-main-sequence stars and their Oort clouds, the probability for interstellar asteroids to carry biotechnospheres or to be interstellar spacecraft is estimated as very low.

Related collections

Most cited references 168

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

A new view of the tree of life.

Laura A. Hug, Brett J. Baker, Karthik Anantharaman … (2016)

The tree of life is one of the most important organizing principles in biology(1). Gene surveys suggest the existence of an enormous number of branches(2), but even an approximation of the full scale of the tree has remained elusive. Recent depictions of the tree of life have focused either on the nature of deep evolutionary relationships(3-5) or on the known, well-classified diversity of life with an emphasis on eukaryotes(6). These approaches overlook the dramatic change in our understanding of life's diversity resulting from genomic sampling of previously unexamined environments. New methods to generate genome sequences illuminate the identity of organisms and their metabolic capacities, placing them in community and ecosystem contexts(7,8). Here, we use new genomic data from over 1,000 uncultivated and little known organisms, together with published sequences, to infer a dramatically expanded version of the tree of life, with Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya included. The depiction is both a global overview and a snapshot of the diversity within each major lineage. The results reveal the dominance of bacterial diversification and underline the importance of organisms lacking isolated representatives, with substantial evolution concentrated in a major radiation of such organisms. This tree highlights major lineages currently underrepresented in biogeochemical models and identifies radiations that are probably important for future evolutionary analyses.

0 comments Cited 466 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Synthetic biology: applications come of age

Ahmad Khalil, James J. Collins (2010)

Key Points Early synthetic biology designs, namely the genetic toggle switch and repressilator, showed that regulatory components can be characterized and assembled to bring about complex, electronics-inspired behaviours in living systems (for example, memory storage and timekeeping). Through the characterization and assembly of genetic parts and biological building blocks, many more devices have been constructed, including switches, memory elements, oscillators, pulse generators, digital logic gates, filters and communication modules. Advances in the field are now allowing expansion beyond small gene networks to the realm of larger biological programs, which hold promise for a wide range of applications, including biosensing, therapeutics and the production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals and biomaterials. Synthetic biosensing circuits consist of sensitive elements that bind analytes and transducer modules that mobilize cellular responses. Balancing these two modules involves engineering modularity and specificity into the various circuits. Biosensor sensitive elements include environment-responsive promoters (transcriptional), RNA aptamers (translational) and protein receptors (post-translational). Biosensor transducer modules include engineered gene networks (transcriptional), non-coding regulatory RNAs (translational) and protein signal-transduction circuits (post-translational). The contributions of synthetic biology to therapeutics include: engineered networks and organisms for disease-mechanism elucidation, drug-target identification, drug-discovery platforms, therapeutic treatment, therapeutic delivery, and drug production and access. In the microbial production of biofuels and pharmaceuticals, synthetic biology has supplemented traditional genetic and metabolic engineering efforts by aiding the construction of optimized biosynthetic pathways. Optimizing metabolic flux through biosynthetic pathways is traditionally accomplished by driving the expression of pathway enzymes with strong, inducible promoters. New synthetic approaches include the rapid diversification of various pathway components, the rational and model-guided assembly of pathway components, and hybrid solutions.