With The Symbiotic Household, Elliott P. Montgomery seeks to find answers to problems caused by climate change. Low-cost, low energy solutions are proposed through complex genetic engineering of domesticated insects--"What better way to deal with a future need than with a future technology?"
The project is deliberatively provocative; "By offering a problematic answer, I want to encourage viewers to question the entire scenario and thereby take part in the discussion." What do you think?
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living could use more inventions like this.
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We can domesticated flies for industrial recycling in a similar way bees were domesticated to increase industrial production of food. Thus, we cost-effectively industrialized the recycling portion of Natures life cycle to match the industrial production of livestock/poultry waste and other types of organic waste. The only outputs from recycling process are high quality organic fertilizer and protein rich animal feed.
I don't know about domesticating insects as a very general proposition. Relatively short generation times and high genetic-based phenotypic variability are pluses, but the actual genetics are a difficult mess in most species so GE isn't nearly as simple as many people thing.
However, the more general idea of using biotech to solve essentially industrial / materials problems is certainly something I see being big in the not too distant future. The term of art is "white biotech" (green = food, red = medical, white = industrial). I, and most people I know of, think of bioreactors and bacteria though, not insects.
I will always remember a bumper sticker I saw on a beaten up truck in a little mining town...
"If it isn't grown or drilled, it is MINED" (of course, you can rearrange the order)
Very true, and more "grown" seems the way to go.