Genetic Engineering and Ecosystems in the 'Verse by MutantEmu

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Genetic Engineering and Ecosystems in the 'Verse

POSTED BY: MUTANTEMU
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 06:43
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Sunday, October 16, 2005 12:34 PM

Hello there. I've been wandering this site for some time, yet never posting until now (Why? I'll never know. Maybe I'm too introvert for my own good). Anyway, this being me first post, I'd like to share a few theories.

According to the production notes for Serenity and Firefly (which I've been a fan of since it first aired)(If you don't believe me, I vividly remember the "girl in a box" advertizing campaign. Hope that's proof enough. . .), the newly terraformed Earths each contain virtually every known lifeform from Earth-that-was. Personally, my question is "How?" Transporting humans would be relatively easy, as vissualized in the BDM's opening, but how would one go about transporting entire plant and animal ecosystems?

Think about it: there are about 1.75 million KNOWN species of animal, but the true numbers may be between 5-100 million! And three/fourths of those are insects! To maintain healthy genitics, at least with vertabrates, you'll need a minimum of 25 breeding pairs. Imagine having to load 50 Blue Whales onto a starship. Each whale weighs over 200 tons and each requiring 4 tons of krill a day! Joss Whedon's notes, from the Visual Companion, say that the trip from Earth-that-was to the new solar system took so long that an entire generation of human travelers went from cradle to grave without ever seeing the outside of their ships! How many tons of krill would that be? (Some animals, like the Great White Shark, cannot even suvive in captivity)

So it's my theory that the terraformers only took the DNA of Earth's lifeforms and cloned them later. Although one might use cryostasis, callibrating it to the metabolisms of 5+ million species would be near impossible. Of course, going from raw DNA to living organism is still beyond our curent technology. The terraformers would also need to produce artificial eggs/wombs for the embryos to grow. Sudies in animal behavior will also need to be improved, since much behavoir in mammals is learned. Once a newly terraformed world's environment is stable enough, alge is released to help produce oxygen, followed by simple plants and plankton, more advanced plants and maybe their pollenaters, then additional animals. Then the humans would later reach their new homes.

Since the terraformers are (most likely) scientists, one thing that scientists love to do is experiment. Even though the new earths would have new geographies, continent sizes, numbers, and locations, they would each have multiple biomes (ecosystems). A simple experiment would be to "play mix-and-match" with the ecosystems. How would animals from Continent A interact with animals from Continent B? This experiment has already been done on smaller scales on Earth, "Feral Animals," and have had both disasterous and pleasent results (In Australia, the poisonous African Cane Toad is reeking havoc on the ecosystem, while the imported Dromedary Camels have been living in peaceful co-habitation with the wildlife for over a century.). Another experiment might be to give a rare Earth animal a major role in its new habitat (Lemurs outnumbering monkeys, platypus instead of otters, etc.) Would the terraformers create unique ecosystems for each planet/moon? While it can be argued that the rush to mass-produce new worlds would impair imaginiation, keep in mind that the trip to the new solar system is a long one (see above), and the terraformers could've done years of planning for each planet and moon in advance.

Of course, if the terraformers can recreate plants and animals from DNA alone, how much can they do with genetics? Can they increase the biodiversity of a world? Might they resurect extinct species? Not dinosaurs, but creatures we currently have extracted DNA from; from Ice Age fauna to recently extinct animals of the 1800's, maybe some modern animals that may go extinct between now and when Earth-that-was is evacuated. Tigers are predicted to be extinct in the wild by 2012!

What about this: the scientists on Sihnon decide to at least to try create a new animal to resemble a creature from ancient Chinese mythology, the Dragon.

OK, maybe that's too extreme. . .
Maybe my imagination has the better of me. Let me know what you all think.

By the way, I seriously doubt we would've seen or heard of the exotic wildlife. Firefly is a Sci-Fi/Western, so we would've only seen or heard mention of animals associated with American Westerns.
Jayne: "The buzzards are the only ones'll find him."

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Sunday, October 16, 2005 1:01 PM

DIEGO

Quote:
Originally posted by MutantEmu:
According to the production notes for Serenity and Firefly the newly terraformed Earths each contain virtually every known lifeform from Earth-that-was. Personally, my question is "How?"

I'm also an old-timer who rarely posts. So hi there, fellow lurker!

Excellent points. You're totally right that the difficulties in building interstellar arks would be extremely difficult. The simplest way technologically might be if suspended animation were advanced enough to take a number of adults of each species in a hibernating state. We have seen that "inducing a protocomatose state" is a relatively easy procedure in the "Verse. So maybe it won't be too difficult if you can just find enough room to fit the large organisms. However, that still means a heck of a lot of biomass. Taking frozen fetuses, fertilized eggs, or just DNA for later cloning are all just as problematic in their own way. I can't even imagine the number of advancements required.

And you're right that the problems don't end with getting viable organisms there. Transmission of learned behavior and the problems of ecosystem assembly rules are going to be really darn tricky.

I think I'm willing to believe that they brought a simplified subset of Earth life that they considered to be the minimum essential for creating a new world in suspended animation (seeds and spores would be okay for plants and fungus and bacteria). Then there must have been a LOT of trial and error. This might explain why all the worlds look rather like southern California. Perhaps they found one ecosystem that worked and replicated it.

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Sunday, October 16, 2005 2:10 PM

DREAMTROVE

There are many many ways to do it.

Let's try the most absurd first. You beam them up. Yep. I ain't kidding. Yeah, I know, there's no transporter, of course not, but that doesn't mean they weren't beamed straight from earth:

Every lifeform on earth can be sequenced without too much difficulty. It takes us decades now, but known information technology, that will translated to minutes or seconds long before firefly time. So all of the lifeforms on earth, inlcuding their specific mitochondria and symbiotic bacteria are already on file. Those files were bought along digitally, or beamed in a digital transmission.

Then they were reconstituted by use of incubators. These are not very far away from right now, technologically speaking, they are sure to be perfected within the next century or so. So, presto, we have a way to turn information+amino acids into plants and animals.

Next comes the problem of having an adequate supply of amino acids. There are a couple ways to do this. One would be to have some genetically engineered organism that was designed specifically for the purpose. Plants create amino acids from raw CO2. CO2 is converted to glucose which becomes the source of hydrocarbons, which then are converted with minerals to creat the amino acids you seek.

A simple organism like this could be brought along and introduced, and might work very fast, especially if it had been genetically engineered for the purpose. Also, such organisms may have already been present on one or more planets, in which case, they needn't be particularly efficient, since they will have already had a billion years or so to work at the problem.

Another possibility which is even lower tech is to bring an ark of seeds and frozen emrbyos, but it's not necessary since the beam solution will undoubtedly be feasible in Firefly time. Even if they can't turn DNA into creatures, which they undoubtedly can, they could hijack any simple organism present, or bring one along.

If learned behavior is a problem, which I'm sure it wouldn't be for mammals, but maybe something like bees, they'd bring a few of them along.

This is all sorted out long before the new star system is started. Remember, they undoubtedly went through all of this on Mars, which after a couple of centuries became a one week journey. So, all the kinks are pretty well worked out.

The main obstacle is creating an ample supply of amino acids which takes time. This would be my guess as to why everything looks like kansas.

As for new species, sure there's no reason why they wouldn't. The next question is are there genetic designers on the colonies? Or are they all back on earth, sending the data?

My guess would be they're back on Earth, mostly, and they probably would send them in sets that they knew worked, as in "This is everything that lives on New Zealand, so we know it works together, put in on your New Zealand-like continent."

But there would probably be a few working at science labs somewhere, and they would possibly make some creatures to be part of the Alliance's "peacekeeping" force. Hellhounds, for example. Excellent at sniffing down crooks, and then ripping them to shreds in 2.9 seconds.

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Sunday, October 16, 2005 4:41 PM

DREAMTROVE

Bump.

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Monday, October 17, 2005 2:14 PM

MUTANTEMU

bump

Thanks for the responses. Sorry that my first post turned into a rant. Anyone else have any thoughts?

By the way, I don't know how to do the quote, spoiler, and emoticons. Anyone know how?

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Monday, October 17, 2005 2:50 PM

DONCOAT

Personally, I don't have a problem with the idea that Earth's biodiversity could have been imported as data and rebuilt in situ using genetic engineering techniques.

My big issues are with the other aspects of terraforming. The modified worlds are said to have (and seem to have) Earth-normal gravity. How does that work? How did the vast amounts of the right atmospheric gasses, water, and so on, get produced? What's more, you can't have that many planets/moons all be within the right temperature zone of the new Sun. How does terraforming compensate for that?

Consider how difficult it would be to terraform Venus, with its thick atmosphere of CO2 that keeps the surface hot enough to melt lead. And it's practically a twin of Earth!

Now take it a step further and imagine trying to terraform, say, one of Neptune's moons.

Here's what I've said about the problem in the past: if we're going to do some terraforming, why not start with a simple project and terraform the Sahara? If you start thinking about the scale of that problem, you quickly realize it's nearly intractible -- but even so, it's a snap compared to the problem of terraforming another celestial object.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ain't about you, Jayne. It's about what they need.

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Monday, October 17, 2005 2:53 PM

DONCOAT

Quote:
Originally posted by MutantEmu:
By the way, I don't know how to do the quote, spoiler, and emoticons. Anyone know how?

Instructions are on the left panel of the post entry screen. You can also get an automatic quote by hitting "Repy with quote" instead of "Reply".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ain't about you, Jayne. It's about what they need.

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Tuesday, October 18, 2005 11:57 AM

DIEGO

Quote:
Originally posted by DonCoat:
Personally, I don't have a problem with the idea that Earth's biodiversity could have been imported as data and rebuilt in situ using genetic engineering techniques.

Aye, but there's many a slip twixt the gene and the organism. We are only beginning to understand in depth how the DNA interacts with cellular machinery to carry out the development of a complicated organism from a fertilized egg. There is also much "data" that can only be transferred culturally. And we haven't the foggiest how we could make a working ecosystem. I suppose you could just throw a bunch of potential organisms into the mix and let them duke it out in a Darwinian game of ecological assembly, but that seems pretty chancy.

Good point about the difficulties of terraforming Venus, our near twin planet. The abiotic side of things is just as difficult as you described. I'm just pointing out that we can't just assume magical short-cuts on the biology either.

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Wednesday, October 19, 2005 1:24 AM

DONCOAT

Quote:
Originally posted by Diego:
Quote:
Originally posted by DonCoat:
Personally, I don't have a problem with the idea that Earth's biodiversity could have been imported as data and rebuilt in situ using genetic engineering techniques.

Aye, but there's many a slip twixt the gene and the organism. We are only beginning to understand in depth how the DNA interacts with cellular machinery to carry out the development of a complicated organism from a fertilized egg. There is also much "data" that can only be transferred culturally. And we haven't the foggiest how we could make a working ecosystem. I suppose you could just throw a bunch of potential organisms into the mix and let them duke it out in a Darwinian game of ecological assembly, but that seems pretty chancy.

I admit I'm less familiar with the biological sciences (though not completely uninformed) so I'll defer to your expertise. FWIW, I never considered it a trivial problem, just one that may yield to progress in this rapidly developing field.

Did you happen to catch "Nova Science Now" last night? There was a segment on creation of life from non-living raw materials in the lab. A number of experts in the field seem to think it's right around the corner. Give us another century and we might have a "Mr. Incubator".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ain't about you, Jayne. It's about what they need.

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Wednesday, October 19, 2005 6:21 AM

DIEGO

Quote:
Originally posted by DonCoat:

Did you happen to catch "Nova Science Now" last night? There was a segment on creation of life from non-living raw materials in the lab. A number of experts in the field seem to think it's right around the corner. Give us another century and we might have a "Mr. Incubator".

No, unfortunately, I did not. I do remain skeptical of the "right around the corner" claims, but am always willing to eat crow when a surprising new advance occurs.

Let's stick around for a century. If there's a "Mr. Incubator", then I'll buy you a drink. In not, then you can buy me one. ;)

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Wednesday, October 19, 2005 6:43 AM

GIANTEVILHEAD

Well Firefly is pretty science light so I wouldn't worry about these things. Besides, it's still better than Star Trek *cough*Genesis Device*cough*.

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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