To me this is both promising and dangerous simultaneously. We are the first species on earth that is able to alter genetics deliberately and this opens many doors. It may be what dooms us to extinction or provides the vehicle for our descendants to survive billions of years in extra-terrestrial environments or the ability to extend human lifetimes by orders of magnitude.

Like atomic energy, once the Genie is out there is going to be no way to put it back in the bottle. Science is, as pointed out here in another thread a one way street of expanded knowledge. Let's hope our collective wisdom can keep pace with our intelligence and knowledge.

Elliot

Here's an idea...

Let's create a new form of cyanobacteria with a better CO2-fixing protein. It could grow really fast and sop up all the extra CO2 we're dumping into the environment, and fix global warming.

Then, being better at scrounging CO2 than any of the competition, it could expand to fill all the oceans, reduce the CO2 level below that any land plant could handle, denude the land, starve all the animals (including us),...

Come to think of it, let's not!