Molecular Biomimetics

This is a really difficult question. With global warming looming over us and an uncertain future rushing to meet us, do we have the time to step back and ask ourselves if the ends justify the means? Direct and programmed manipulation of bacterial genomes can produce speedy results, but are there negative externalities to this method? We do see rapid recombination and horizontal gene transfer in prokaryotes, so our current manipulations are not completely without precedent in the natural world. Traditionally, humans have "domesticated" microbes by manipulating environmental factors in order to push natural evolution in a particular direction. This method is still being used in most fields, including cellulosic ethanol production. Dr. Frank Rosenzweig at the University of Montana is cultivating yeast under glucose-starved conditions while at the same time introducing recalcitrant xyulose sugars into the solution. He hopes the yeast, over time, will evolve to ferment the xyulose sugars, producing ethanol. This method works quite well, but it takes much longer than saturate mutagenesis or gene reassembly techniques.
Directly manipulating microbes in an artificial environment through mutagenesis or plasmid insertion has been a useful tool to microbiologists for several decades, but it has the potential to produce a "monster organism," with far-reaching and incalculable consequences on the natural environment. This has not yet happened, but that doesn't mean that it won't. The further we strip down and alter prokaryotic genomes and do away with the genetic safety nets put there by billions of years of evolution, the higher the chances are that things will go wrong. The ideal solution would be to develop better in vitro techniques for protein synthesis, removing genomes from the equation. It's the difference between bio-utilization and biomimicry. There are already methods of producing artificial catalysts from nucleic acids, called aptamers, with rapid evolvability, but their catalytic powers are limited. My main concern is that we might not develop biomimetic solutions to enzyme development and production in time to save ourselves from this climate dilemma. We may have to use more traditional bio-assisted methods for the time being.