Soil Survival and Enhancement Project

My goal is to conceptualize how CRISPR can be used to engineer soil to reduce carbon emission, improve water retention, and reduce nutrient loss. By genetically altering soil to increase its porosity, to allow more space for water and fluid retention, we can solve a myriad of health concerns. Retention of water in the soil is critical for drought prevention and nutrient release prevention. Warming soil affects food we eat, and air we breathe in, ultimately harming biodiverse health. Carbon release, water loss, and nutrient loss causes poor plant growth, provoking crops to lose true vitamins and mineral value. It is critical that soil retains nutrients and doesn’t emit excess carbon and nitrate, which is tied to its ability to hold water, as nutrients leave with water. The genetic alteration of soil pore size distribution to enhance water retention is the solution that will revolutionize our air, food, and environment.

Soil depletion occurs as the conditions to maintain a soil’s fertility are not retained, and this raises the risks of future droughts due to the soil’s moisture levels. When enough water passes through the soil, nutrients dissolve in the water, leaving with the water once the soil releases water it cannot retain. Drier soils promote heatwaves, and hinder plant growth. Depleted soils cause poor plant growth, causing reduced carbon dioxide uptake from the atmosphere. The soil’s inability to retain nutrients and remain healthy is what leads to the growth of crops that lose their original and true nutrient, vitamin, and mineral capacity. Current solutions are simply changing farming methods or inserting chemicals into our foods. Cover crops intend to diminish these losses of nutrients during certain seasons, as well, by trapping soil nitrate and recycling nitrogen. This causes soil nitrate poisoning, which is detrimental to the health of one’s environment. Synthetic fertilizers are used to enhance food, but the chemicals are proven to only harm us without us consuming true nutrients from the soil. With this domino effect, we are losing too many necessary nutrients, leading to a point of no return for human food consumption and biodiversity. 

By making sure soil retains water and true nutrients and doesn’t emit carbon, CRISPR can edit the genome of soil microbes to modify its pore size distribution for retention of water, because nutrients leave soil once water passes through. We consider the soil to be a  bunch of capillary tubes, or a bundle of small pore and large pores. If the tube is very large, then water doesn’t go up so much or fast, because there’s too much weight pulling on the water to go down. The opposite is true for smaller tubes or pores. By gene editing the pore size and space between soil, water retention can be changed. CRISPR can find and edit the DNA of the isolated genes in order to alter the functions of microbes by editing pore size. Studying soil physics with HYDRUS software will assist in understanding the hydraulic properties of soil with integrative genomics, and semantic graphs will be used for estimation of nutrient removal, crop yields, and calculations of nutrients. Integration of these studies and existing technology all together will take us many steps further in improving the nutrient availability in microbes and water retention, enhancing our soil indefinitely.

SOS improves the conditions of life for all living things on planet Earth. Soil is the basis of food systems, and is what sustains us. Enhancement of soil health will lead to the enhancement of our own health. In the past, soil has been tampered with due to human actions such as farming and the addition of pesticides. Farming methods degrade the soil and cause it to release excess water, nutrients, and carbon. Soil loses its true nutrients and minerals, and crops are genetically modified or fertilized synthetically as a means to replace these nutrients. The true vitamins are lost, and harmful chemicals are introduced into the food we eat. As the soil is healthier and retains nutrients, the amount of chemicals introduced in the environment will reduce drastically as a result, serving to improve the health of all those consuming the very food grown on the land we walk on. This solution serves to impact all of biodiversity, present and the future, as soil cradles the roots to future generations. 

Using CRISPR to force the soil to retain carbon and necessary vitamins decreases carbon emissions and loss of important nutrients in foods grown from these soils. My solution’s target population is large farmers as well as all life on Earth. Retention of water is critical for drought prevention, as soil moisture levels significantly contribute to drought. Genetic modification for enhancement of soil will allow farmers to continue efficient farming without the long term health effects caused from nutrient loss and chemical insertion. If drought can be prevented, and food production becomes healthier and abundant, biodiversity can live in harmony again.

To my understanding, using CRISPR to enhance and assist soil has never been attempted. This is a new direction in order to preserve the integrity of the food we eat, and a barrier against the coming drought. This solution is unique because it solves two enormous problems at once. In the current state of our world in 2020, these issues are overlooked. However, eating nutritious food is important to all life and everyone’s well being, as is prevention of a drought in a populated land. This all starts with soil, therefore it is very important that it be enhanced. Genetic alteration is a unique and innovative solution that can be used to solve these problems from the very start of a soil’s functions.

CRISPR is the gene editing technology that will be used to locate specific DNA inside the soil, and alter that which is responsible for its properties regarding retention of water, carbon, nitrogen, and important nutrients. HYDRUS-1D is a model, developed by Dr. Rien van Genuchten, demonstrating and portraying the physical and hydraulic processes of soil and how water moves through it. Implementation of this modeling software in my studies is to advance my studies and research into detailing and forming this solution. 

CRISPR technology is a proven gene editing technique that is being applied to  crops and plants. It has not yet been focused on soil to my awareness; I plan to introduce CRISPR to benefit our soil and interconnected food systems. In some studies, CRISPR is being applied to genome editing of plants to accelerate crop growth for the ever rising population that needs to be fed. My concept to use this technology to gene edit the soil itself needs to be tested in the lab, we can protect and enhance the genetic structure of soil to prevent drought and mass starvation. WhenI am able to secure funding, I will build upon the research being done in Denmark. In February of 2019, the Technical University of Denmark discovered anti-CRISPR proteins in two soil samples, which essentially resist the bacterial phages that could infect the bacteria and unintentionally change the DNA of the soil with the application of CRISPR technology. These findings suggest that identifying those DNA fragments that avoid CRISPR-Cas9 activity is possible and attainable, facilitating the process of locating the correct sequences in soil to successfully edit and have an effect on the final soil functions. 

If we don’t find a way to protect and enhance soil, then life on Earth will be difficult to sustain in the coming climate changes and predicted droughts.

The first change is a rather neurological transformation back to a symbiotic relationship between humanity and nature.. I want to change the perceptions that currently mainstream society has on soil, to reconnect them to it. We have been so removed from the soil and its critical processes of health, and have stopped realizing the interconnectivity and supreme importance of healthy soil with nutritious food and planetary survival.. 

Secondly, I want to catch the wave of technological change that can be used to protect the earth and food systems. 

By editing the genes of the soil and its DNA, we can increase the amount of water it generally retains, consequently retaining the nutrients that we attempt to replace with dangerous chemicals. It is a duty of humanity to try to invest their innovations for those who cannot speak-- the animals, the plants, and our very soil. 

This solution currently serves to affect every form of life on Earth-- single legged, double legged, multi legged and even legless. In one month, one year, and five years it will continue to serve all life on Earth, but the amount of the world we can affect by enhancing our soil will grow exponentially as our soil develops into a healthier state. 

My goals within the next year is to spread my message, contact soil conservation groups to emphasize the importance of this project, and ultimately create awareness. Within the next five years, I hope to link with a lab to begin to do this and begin to test soil enhancement through genetic alteration. In these next five years, my final goal is to have the CRISPR editing on soil already tested and getting it out of the lab and into the field, quite literally.  

Some barriers that currently exist for me to accomplish my goals in the upcoming years are gaining access to a lab and securing contact with experts using CRISPR.

Some other factors that need to be considered when editing for change of water retention are contaminant flow in soil, salinity of water, volatilization of chemicals and pesticides into the atmosphere, the different plants grown from the soil, and their root uptake. 

The factors mentioned will be kept constant as we edit all types of soil and every particle size. 

I plan to continue to spread my message and contact experts, labs (both in the universities and private sectors), soil conservation groups, and integrative genomics scientists. Slowly and surely, I hope to build my platform and work with these people to get SOS (Sia on Soil) out of the lab and into the field.