INTRODUCING SPRUCE
Revitalizing Deforested Ecosystems
Using directed evolution and gene editing to create faster-growing trees
If there were no trees on Earth, every living organism would die within a day.
Trees have been a constant presence in our lives, and we have relied on them for millions of years. We don’t realize how crucial they are to our survival. As the largest plants on the planet, they provide oxygen, store carbon, stabilize the soil, and support the world’s wildlife, as well as supply us with the materials we need for tools and shelter.
Given how much trees benefit us, you’d think we’d return the favor and do everything we could to preserve and protect them. This, however, is not the case. In fact, 42 million trees will be chopped down today. This equates to 15 billion trees being destroyed in a single year.
Deforestation has wiped out more than half of the world’s rainforests in the last 60 years. Furthermore, due to logging and the very long maturation time of trees, we are unable to replenish these forests quickly enough. This is a massive global issue, and we need to take action fast.
Table of Contents
- Trees
- Why are trees so important? - The Problem: Deforestation
- What is deforestation?
- Environmental Effects of Deforestation From Above
- Environment Effects of Deforestation From Below
- Effects of Deforestation on Indigenous People - Our Solution: Spruce
- What is Spruce?
- Directed Evolution
- CRISPR
- Our Editing Process
- Why is this not possible today? - Deployment and Scaling
- Phase 1
- Phase 2
- Phase 3
- Our Roadmap - The Amazon Rainforest
- Environmental Impacts
- Economic Impact - Conclusion
- Learn More!
Trees
Trees are not only an incredibly beautiful part of the natural environment; they are also extremely efficient machines that work constantly to make Earth a healthier planet. Having said that, have you ever wondered why trees are really so important? Why people are so concerned about reforestation, and why they get so outraged when the Amazon burns?
There are actually numerous reasons why trees are vital to both our planet and to us humans — regardless of where you live — and why we should strive to protect them.
Still not convinced? Well, in no particular order, here are some reasons that explain how important trees are.
Why are trees so important?
5 proven ways that trees make a big difference:
- Trees improve air quality.
Trees are sometimes referred to as the Earth’s lungs because their leaves absorb pollutants, trapping (or “sequestering”) and filtering contaminants in the air. Trees, like all green plants, produce oxygen through photosynthesis. - Trees improve water quality and reduce flooding and erosion.
The leafy canopy of a tree captures precipitation before it reaches the ground, allowing some of it to drip gently and the rest to evaporate. Tree roots help to keep soil in place, preventing erosion. Trees reduce the force of storms and the amount of runoff into sewers, streams, and rivers, thus improving water quality. A hundred mature trees can catch approximately 100,000 gallons of rain per year. - Trees provide habitat for plants and animals.
Wildlife and other plants will inevitably follow where trees are planted, resulting in a healthier ecosystem. A variety of birds and small animals use trees for shelter and food. - Trees improve health.
According to research, exposure to trees has a relaxing effect on humans, reducing stress and instilling a sense of well-being. Patients in hospitals who have a view of trees recover faster than those who do not. Children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) can concentrate better after spending time in natural settings. - Trees fight climate change.
Carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere are one of the factors influencing global warming and climate change. Carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse’ gas known for its ability to trap heat. In a rapidly warming world, the excess carbon dioxide produced by humans is literally trapping heat in our atmosphere.
A tree absorbs carbon dioxide from the air as it grows, a process known as photosynthesis. It absorbs carbon as wood and emits oxygen molecules. As a result, forests act as a giant filter. They remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and only reintroduce them if they are burned or decomposed back into the earth.
The Problem: Deforestation
What is deforestation?
Deforestation is the clearing, destroying, or otherwise removal of trees through deliberate, natural, or accidental means. It can happen anywhere there are trees and other plant life, but it is currently most prevalent in the Amazon rainforest.
The loss of trees and other vegetation can cause climate change, desertification, soil erosion, fewer crops, flooding, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and a host of problems for indigenous people.
Deforestation occurs for a number of reasons, including farming, with 80% of deforestation resulting from extensive cattle ranching, and logging for materials and development. It has been happening for thousands of years, arguably since man began converting from hunter/gatherer to agricultural based societies, and required larger, unobstructed tracks of land to accommodate cattle, crops, and housing. It was only after the onset of the modern era that it became an epidemic.
Environmental Effects of Deforestation From Above
Loss of Habitat
One of the most dangerous and disturbing consequences of deforestation is the extinction of animal and plant species as a result of habitat loss. Forests are home to 70% of all land animals and plant species. Deforestation endangers not only known species, but also unknown ones.
The rainforest trees that shelter some species also provide the canopy that regulates temperature. Deforestation causes more drastic temperature variations from day to night, similar to a desert, which could be fatal for many residents.
Increased Greenhouse Gases
In addition to reducing habitat, a lack of trees allows more greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere. Healthy forests absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and serve as valuable carbon sinks. Deforested areas lose this ability, causing more carbon to be released.
Water in the Atmosphere
The trees also help to control the amount of water in the atmosphere by regulating the water cycle. There is less water in the air to return to the soil in deforested areas. This results in drier soil and an inability to grow crops.
Environmental Effects of Deforestation From Below
Soil Erosion and Flooding
Soil erosion and coastal flooding are two other consequences of deforestation. Trees aid in the retention of water and topsoil, which provides the rich nutrients required to sustain additional forest life.
Without forests, soil erodes and washes away, forcing farmers to relocate and perpetuate the cycle. The barren land left behind by these unsustainable agricultural practices is then more vulnerable to flooding, particularly in coastal areas.
Effects of Deforestation on Indigenous People
Destruction of Homelands
As large areas of forest are cleared, allowing exposed earth to wilt and die and destroying the habitats of numerous species, indigenous communities who live there and rely on the forest to sustain their way of life are also threatened.
The loss of forests has an immediate and direct impact on their way of life that we in the highly industrialized parts of the world will never understand, despite our own reliance on what the rainforest provides. For indigenous peoples, the level of immediacy is exponentially higher.
Governments in countries with rainforests frequently attempt to evict indigenous tribes before clear-cutting begins. This is one of the foreseen consequences of deforestation.
With all of these issues associated with deforestation and the alarming rates at which it is accelerating, it’s pretty obvious that we need to do something about it. Currently, the primary solution to deforestation is to plant more trees to replace those that have already been lost. This isn’t working because trees can’t grow that fast. However, if we could replenish these trees more quickly, we would be able to truly and sustainably repopulate the forests we rely on.
Our Solution: Spruce
What is Spruce?
Spruce is a company that aims to utilize genetic editing and directed evolution to regenerate ecosystems and forests that have been laid to waste by deforestation. By creating trees that grow quickly in the harsh conditions of deforested soil, we believe we can revive entire habitats and ecosystems to restore the beauty to all that has been seemingly destroyed — all while soaking up the carbon emissions from the atmosphere.
Directed Evolution
Our technical process starts with directed evolution. Directed evolution, traditionally, is the process of monitoring a species’ natural random evolution and selecting a variant from it.
In essence, a company in directed evolution would watch the species evolve on its own, monitoring it until a certain mutation or genetic variant is observed that the company finds desirable. From there, they select that variant and begin breeding it to further improve it or to purpose it.
All directed evolution experiments begin with a parent protein/gene and an engineering goal.
However, traditional directed evolution is very time-consuming as, typically, ≈30–50% of random mutations are strongly deleterious, 50–70% are approximately neutral, and perhaps 0.5–0.01% are beneficial.
That’s precisely where CRISPR comes in.
CRISPR
We intend to accelerate the directed evolution process using DNA editing tools, like CRISPR. CRISPR effectively avoids the process of constantly screening batches of proteins for a desired evolution. Instead, it allows you to specifically target the gene. From there, all that needs to be done is to make sure that there aren’t any off-target effects from the edit done to the genome.
In a study conducted at the University of Maryland, they found that CRISPR could be used to not only accelerate the directed evolution process but to introduce more direct and targeted changes to the genome. Once the species has been edited, the species is analyzed and bred. In doing so, all the offspring of that species will carry that specific mutation, essentially introducing evolution into the family tree of the species. A research team well-known for using this process is the Saudi research team from the Desert Agriculture Project. This was a university-led team working on using CRISPR and directed evolution to make rice and other food immune to herboxidiene — a herbicide known to inhibit plant growth.
Our Editing Process
AI-Powered Genetic Engineering
When we’re editing the trees, they’ll grow very quickly. Our plan is to make a bunch of edits to a tree, then let it grow and reproduce, and then examine its offspring to see if it has any mutations. If there is a bad mutation or something doesn’t look right, we can go back and change the edits until we get one with no bad mutations for 5–7 generations.
We will do this with batches of trees using genome sequencing kits (sourced from Sherlock Biosciences), capable of rapidly sequencing the entire genome, which we believe will be available by the time our project begins. The idea is that each batch with a bad mutation is like a data point, and once we have enough pairs of gene edits and bad mutations, we can use AI to simulate our edits for us, allowing us to easily and quickly find the optimal series of edits for any type of tree.
Why is this not possible today?
Tree genome sequencing hasn’t been explored much, with only 25 species from 4 of 100 families of trees being fully genomically sequenced. Also, using CRISPR for directed evolution has hardly been explored beyond surface level. We believe that, with tree genome sequencing projects, an increase in CRISPR research, and simpler rapid genome sequencing tools, our idea will become feasible within the next 5–8 years.
Spruce is reliant on future technology. But for the time being, we can outline exactly what technology we will need.
- We need these AI algorithms to understand genomics and highlight relevant sites.
- We need the ability to make changes to many different plants accurately to ensure minimal mutations.
- We need to read FULL genomes to ensure that our changes are in effect and did not change anything important.
However, since we do not yet have this technology, we want to ensure that we are ready to implement Spruce as soon as possible.
Deployment and Scaling
Phase 1
We will begin in the forests of upstate New York, which are close to labs and can serve as proof of repopulation on a small scale.
Phase 2
We will then size up and test in southern Europe.
Phase 3
Our final goal is full implementation in the Amazon!
Our Roadmap
The Amazon Rainforest
You may be wondering why we chose the Amazon as our primary goal. Well, we chose it because it is where we can make the most impact. There are lots of reasons for this, both environmental and economic.
Environmental Impacts
The Amazon Rainforest is home to over 60% of all land species, and it accounts for 50% of total land-based carbon absorption. Because 46 percent of the Amazon’s natural range has been destroyed in recent decades, there is plenty of room to repopulate trees.
Rainforests are the hardest ecosystems to revitalize after being deforested. This is because their ecosystem is always in a very sensitive balance. When all the trees are removed, the soil erodes. When soil erodes, it becomes unsustainable for normal trees to plant and regrow in it for a multitude of reasons. The most prominent of these reasons is the lack of nutritional value in the soil, therefore the tree simply can’t sustain itself in that harsh condition. The Amazon Rainforest has been deforested to a great degree and alone it is responsible for a tremendous 6% of the world’s oxygen.
Economic Impact
Additionally, it has been proven that preserving the rainforest would save the economy $8.2 billion in annual revenue.
The $8.2 billion includes the economic benefit of existing sustainable industries in the rainforest, such as Brazil nut farming and rubber tree timber. However, it also takes into account the economic benefits of the Amazon’s environmental influence, such as carbon dioxide sequestration and weather regulation.
Tearing down the forest would significantly reduce rainfall, resulting in a $422 million annual loss to agriculture, negating the benefits of having more land to farm on.
In conclusion…
Our team is looking forward to a future where we can stop destroying our forests and begin to repopulate them. We can’t wait to see how Spruce and these new trees help achieve carbon neutrality, expand animal habitats, and restore the earth’s natural beauty.
