Global biodiversity declined by up to 11% during the 20th century due to land-use change alone, and projections suggest climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline by the mid-21st century, further accelerating species loss.
With numerous species now facing extinction, an international team of researchers today proposes in the journal BioScience the answer might lie in Earth’s nearest neighbour, which is celebrated by so many of the objects in the Science Museum Group Collection.
In the wake of earlier work on a ‘doomsday ark’, the team argues for the creation of a lunar biorepository, a passive, long-lasting storage facility for cryopreserved samples of Earth’s most at-risk animal species, from elephants and great cats to plankton, pollinators and mosses.
Led by Mary Hagedorn of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Washington DC, the team aims to harness the Moon’s naturally cold temperatures – unlike anywhere on our home world – to preserve biodiversity, which ‘is critical to life on Earth,’ she said.
The Moon offers a way to store biological samples for long periods without the need for power, liquid nitrogen or to be tended by people, as would be the case for a lunar ‘ark’.
There are many existing biological repositories on Earth, from UK Biobank – which has blood, scans and data on half a million people – to Kew’s underground Millennium Seed Bank in Sussex.
However, changing climatic conditions on Earth already threaten the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the inspiration for this project, which experienced floods after permafrost melted in 2017 and is a doomsday vault to safeguard the world’s food supply. ‘Biorepositories are very susceptible to natural disasters,’ said Dr Hagedorn.
‘For example, many of the biorepositories in New Orleans were destroyed in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. This was due to the lack of energy and access to liquid nitrogen. A passive biorepository solves these insecurity issues.’
Ideal sites on the Moon for these passive repositories of life would be permanently shadowed regions near the poles, where temperatures remain consistently below –196 degrees Celsius all year around.
As a bonus, the team says, such a lunar facility include protection from Earth-based natural disasters, climate change, and conflicts. And a lunar biorepository would advance our fundamental understanding of how cells behave in space and help preserve animal, plant, and microbial samples that may be essential to human exploration of the solar system.
An initial focus in the development of a lunar biorepository would be on cryopreserving skin cells, called fibroblasts, and the team has started to work out how to do this using the Starry Goby (Asterropteryx semipunctata) fish, with other species to follow. ‘We already had data on how to cryopreserve stem cells of the Goby and continued with this exemplar system for this work,’ said Dr Hagedorn.
They also plan to use fibroblast samples gathered at more than 80 sites across the United States by the U S National Science Foundation’s National Ecological Observatory Network.
They envisage a broad collaboration among nations, agencies, and international stakeholders and initially want to set up partnerships, particularly with space research agencies, and conducting further testing on Earth and on board the International Space Station.
The project faces a range of challenges along the way, from developing robust packaging for space transport, to governance and working out how to cut radiation exposure, whether by using antioxidant cocktails or physical barriers like water, lead or cement.
The programme would take decades, they say. But time is running out because a high proportion of species and ecosystems face extinction.
‘Given sufficient funds, we could make this biorepository a reality much faster. We know how to collect the cells and cryopreserve them,’ said Dr Hagedorn. ‘We need a broader partner base and access to the latest radiation testing technology to move this forward quickly.’