The moon could one day provide storage for a genetic back-up of Earth’s species, scientists have proposed.
Background
Scientists around the world have long been working on how to store vital species information, with leading work taking place at Norway’s “doomsday” vault, a Global Seed Vault in Svalbard; the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership at the UK’s Kew Gardens; and a seed bank in Ukraine. But as well as a focus on plants and seeds, vital information from other species on Earth also needs preserving.
Cells from one species threatened on Earth, corals, have already been cryopreserved – and successfully revived – in a bank at the world’s largest museum, the US Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. But research published in BioScience by the Institute’s Doctor Mary Hagedorn in July 2024, now takes the idea a step further – a giant step to the moon.
Stable moon conditions are ideal
The study suggests that “In the face of potential catastrophic ecosystem loss” due to “climate-related warming”, a “lunar biorepository to maintain samples in a cryopreserved state with little human intervention” could be created, thanks to stable year-round temperatures at the moon’s southern pole “at or below –196° Celsius” – the ideal conditions for cryopreservation.
The samples would not only be taken from corals, but a range of animals, from the culturally important to those that help to manage certain habitats (so-called “ecosystem engineers”), as well as pollinators, and endangered species. The “bank” would rely on skin cells called fibroblast cells which can be easily cryopreserved, or alternatives such as larvae or reproductive cells, where skin cells cannot be collected.
One co-author of the research and cryobiology engineer, John Bischof, speaking to Minnesota Public Radio, said the idea “is a way of actually putting away really important genetic material in a place where it will be safe for, potentially, generations.”
Next steps
Next steps include completing the design for a box that can withstand space radiation and, importantly, lunar dust. The team hopes that there may be space on upcoming space missions to test prototypes and part of the point of publishing the recent paper was to generate new partnerships.
But why go as far as the moon when it is sacred to some communities on Earth, and according to critics such as Rob Brooker, head of ecological sciences at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, it involves such “cost and effort”?
The answer lies in the unreliability of conditions on Earth, where such banks have already been put at risk due to flooding and armed conflicts. Hagedorn explains: “We’re seeing the beginnings of both climate disasters and social disasters that could collide in ways that we just couldn’t possibly imagine. I think it’s always good to be ready for the future, no matter what.”
