Desperate US Bid to Engineer Corals for Climate Change

Nikki Traylor-Knowles takes out a rescued coral reef from a tank to study restoring Florida's coral reefs. CHANDAN KHANNA AFP
Nikki Traylor-Knowles takes out a rescued coral reef from a tank to study restoring Florida's coral reefs. CHANDAN KHANNA AFP
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Desperate US Bid to Engineer Corals for Climate Change

Nikki Traylor-Knowles takes out a rescued coral reef from a tank to study restoring Florida's coral reefs. CHANDAN KHANNA AFP
Nikki Traylor-Knowles takes out a rescued coral reef from a tank to study restoring Florida's coral reefs. CHANDAN KHANNA AFP

A bit of coral shimmers like gold in a US lab as part of urgent work to help the species protect itself from climate change, an effort even skeptical experts see as sadly justifiable.

Researchers in Florida are aiming to determine whether coral can be saved from rising water temperatures and acidification by transplanting stem cells from resistant varieties to those more vulnerable to climate impacts, AFP said.

In other words, global warming worries have reached a point that scientists are trying to tweak some organisms' genetics so that they might survive.

"Reefs are dying at an alarming rate and they are not able to keep up with climate change," Nikki Traylor-Knowles, who heads a University of Miami team working on the coral, told AFP.

"At this point, we've just got to try everything and see what works," she said before nations gathered at the COP26 summit in Glasgow -- seen as a last chance to halt catastrophic climate change.

The Florida research is one of a handful of efforts backed by Revive and Restore, a non-profit based near San Francisco that sees genetic engineering as a valuable tool for conservationists working to save plants and animals from doom.

Organisms on Earth have survived in the long run by gradually evolving, or moving to places where the land, habitat or temperature are more hospitable. Climate change is altering the environment too quickly for that to work.

"We don't have evolutionary time to help species make that kind of adaptation," Revive co-founder Ryan Phelan told AFP at a California conference.

"We're going to have to intervene, or we have to let it go," she said.

The concern for coral is particularly pressing because oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions, shielding land surfaces but generating huge, long-lasting marine heatwaves.

'We may have to do it'
These are pushing many species of coral -- often dubbed the "rainforests of the oceans" for their rich biodiversity -- past their limits of tolerance.

Along with pollution and dynamite fishing, global warming wiped out 14 percent of the world's coral reefs between 2009 and 2018, according to a survey by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, the biggest ever carried out.

More than half of an $8 million Catalyst Science Fund for backing biotechnology tools to help solve conservation's most intractable problems is being poured into coral projects.

"Our thinking is the tools we develop for coral will be generalizable for other marine species," said Bridget Baumgartner, who coordinates coral projects at Revive.

"We hope we can easily translate them to problems with kelp, oysters, sea stars, what have you."

Genetic projects backed by Revive and Restore elsewhere in the United States have yielded a black-footed ferret named Elizabeth Ann, cloned from frozen cells decades old, and which could be the salvation of her species.

And a yearling called Kurt being cared for in a California zoo is a resurrected Przewalski wild horse, which had gone extinct.

Though neither are connected to climate change, the creatures' existence are key to the group's argument in favor of their genetic work.

Certainly genetic tinkering raises concerns, said Stanford University law and biosciences director Henry Greely, citing potential for deformations or an altered plant or animal causing unexpected consequences in the wild.

Yet he sees saving species, including coral, from decimation as worthy uses of the technology.

"I'm a fan of this approach, if it's done carefully, with appropriate regulation and prudence," Greely said of adding genetic technology tools to conservation efforts.

Gregory Kaebnick, a scholar at bioethics research institute The Hastings Center also supported creature-protecting tweaks, and noted the risk of a creation running amok was lower than simply failing to impart durable, effective changes.

"I'm not excited about the prospect of changing coral to let them survive, but it might be something that we have to do," he added.



SpaceX Starship Explodes During Routine Test

Flames rise as a SpaceX rocket explodes in Brownsville, Texas, US, June 18, 2025, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. TheRocketFuture via X/via REUTERS
Flames rise as a SpaceX rocket explodes in Brownsville, Texas, US, June 18, 2025, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. TheRocketFuture via X/via REUTERS
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SpaceX Starship Explodes During Routine Test

Flames rise as a SpaceX rocket explodes in Brownsville, Texas, US, June 18, 2025, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. TheRocketFuture via X/via REUTERS
Flames rise as a SpaceX rocket explodes in Brownsville, Texas, US, June 18, 2025, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. TheRocketFuture via X/via REUTERS

One of Elon Musk's SpaceX Starships exploded during a routine test late Wednesday in Texas, law enforcement said, in the latest setback to the billionaire's dream of turning humanity into an interplanetary species.

The Starship 36 suffered "catastrophic failure and exploded" at the Starbase launch facility shortly after 11:00 pm (0400 GMT Thursday), a Facebook post by the Cameron County authorities said, according to AFP.

A video shared with the post showed the megarocket attached to the launch arm, and then a flash and a towering, fiery explosion.

Musk's Space X said the rocket was preparing for the tenth flight test when it "experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase," without elaborating on the nature of the complication.

"A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for," Space X added on social media.

"There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue."

The Starship was not scheduled for launch on Wednesday evening when the explosion occurred during a "routine static fire test," according to the Cameron County authorities.

During a static fire, part of the procedures preceding a launch, the Starship's Super Heavy booster would be anchored to the ground to prevent it from lifting off during the test-firing.

Starbase on the south Texas coast, near the border with Mexico, is the headquarters for Musk's space project.

Standing 403 feet (123 meters) tall, Starship is the world's largest and most powerful rocket and central to Musk's long-term vision of colonizing Mars.

The Starship is billed as a fully reusable rocket with a payload capacity of up to 150 metric tons.

The latest setback follows an explosion of a prototype Starship over the Indian Ocean in late May.

The biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built had lifted off on May 27 from the Starbase facility, but the first-stage Super Heavy booster blew up instead of executing its planned splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The previous two outings also ended poorly, with the upper stage disintegrating over the Caribbean.

But the failures will likely do little to dent Musk's spacefaring ambitions.

SpaceX has been betting that its "fail fast, learn fast" ethos, which has helped it dominate commercial spaceflight, will eventually pay off.

The company has caught the Super Heavy booster in the launch tower's giant robotic arms three times -- a daring engineering feat it sees as key to rapid reusability and slashing costs.

NASA is also increasingly reliant on SpaceX, whose Dragon spacecraft is vital for ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in early May approved an increase in annual Starship rocket launches from five to 25, stating that the increased frequency would not adversely impact the environment.

The decision overruled objections from conservation groups who had warned the expansion could endanger sea turtles and shorebirds.