Growing Alien Trees on Earth
Michael > August 16th, 2022, 05:21 PM
So here is an interesting video from Virginia Public Media (uploaded earlier this year) in which they talk about how American Chestnut trees are coming back thanks to a cross-breeding program utilizing Chinese Chestnnut trees (which are resistant to the blight that has destroyed the American Chestnut species over the past 50 years).
Watch Chestnut Trees Are Returning to Forests from YouTube
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It's not much of a leap to imagine a story where Earth scientists attempt to save one or more species of plant hit by a "space fungus" by cross-breeding them with similar plants from other worlds.
Obviously, you'd have to find extra-terrestrial plants with compatible DNA. Or maybe scientists could just harvest alien DNA that created genes that are resistant to the space blight and then inject them (via CRISPR-like technology) into Earth plants.
Anything dealing with CRISPR-like technology raises ethical questions. And I imagine some people might be hostile to the idea of using "space DNA" to save species on Earth.