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Green Biotechnology for Sustainable Development and Climate Change
Summary
This paper is not about microplastics. It is a broad review of green biotechnology for sustainable development, covering biofuels, genetically modified crops, climate-smart agriculture, and bioluminescent plants. While it briefly mentions plants engineered with microplastic-degrading enzymes as a future possibility, this is a minor point in a wide-ranging biotechnology overview with no substantive focus on microplastic pollution or health effects.
The world population has reached 8 billion on 15th of November 2022. With the exploding human population on, the crisis of energy sources, global warming and accumulation of environmental pollutants is gradually leading towards extinction of life on earth. Policymakers envision biofuels to replace fossil fuels, to resolve the aforesaid concerns. Biotechnology along with next generation sequencing (NGS), omics and nano technologies is actualising the policymakers’ vision by creating high-performance GM oil plants, resistant to biotic/abiotic stress, through genetic engineering of genes affecting triacylglycerols (TAGs) and ligno-cellulose metabolic pathways. Modern plant biotechnology employing Agrobacterium-mediated site-specific integration (Agro-SSI), RNAi and CRISPR-Cas genome editing has introduced climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approaches that sustainably increase productivity by biofortification, enhance adaptation to climate change, mitigate greenhouse effects, as well as preserve soil health by carbon and nitrogen assimilation. Herbicide tolerant (HT) crops tolerate exposure to broad-spectrum herbicides like glyphosate and glufosinate, thereby promoting conservation tillage and carbon sequestration in soil. Transgenic/transplastomic autoluminescent flora engineered with multi-cassette lux-luciferase constructs addressing substrate-reliance, timing and intensity of bioluminescence, are going to be the eco-friendly future street-lights, extinguishing combustion of coal. Phyto-remedial crops equipped with microplastic-degrading enzymes, heavy-metal absorbing proteins and xenobiotic degradation abilities are further advancements to sustainable development goals.