Jiong Fu

Hainan Provincial Key Laboratory for Crop Molecular Breeding, Sanya, 572025, Hainan, China
Author    Correspondence author
GMO Biosafety Research, 2024, Vol. 15, No. 6   
Received: 10 Oct., 2024    Accepted: 15 Nov., 2024    Published: 28 Nov., 2024

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This study focuses on the cutting-edge exploration of gene editing technology in environmental remediation and biosecurity transformation. With the help of precise regulation tools such as CRISPR, researchers can customize engineered strains with targeted recognition functions for pollutants, and their degradation efficiency for heavy metals and organic pollutants is 5 to 8 times higher than that of traditional methods. This "microbial cleaner" not only reduces operating costs by 60%, but also avoids ecological risks through the suicide switch design, achieving a dual-effect synergy of pollution control and biosecurity. The core breakthrough of this technology lies in the construction of a dual guarantee system and the development of an intelligent biological protection system, which enables the modified microorganisms to automatically become inactive in non-target environments. Synthetic microbiome technology is utilized to construct a microbiota alliance with interspecific checks and balances. It is worth noting that the probability of horizontal gene transfer in engineered bacteria has been controlled below 10-7 through anti-codon expansion technology, significantly reducing the risk of gene contamination. In the future, it is necessary to integrate artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to build a digital twin model of pollutants - microorganisms - ecosystems, and promote the evolution of environmental restoration towards precision and intelligence.

Synthetic biology; Environmental remediation; Biosafety; Gene editing; Biocontainment strategies