That’s what a recent paper in PLoS Biology asks—and doesn’t really answer.

Instead, it lays out a great argument, giving the pros and cons of using the controversial technique in addressing conservation issues. It also urges the two parties—synthetic biologists and conservation biologists—to get in the same room and talk about the possibilities and problems with open minds. In fact, the authors of paper organized a meeting this week in the United Kingdom, bringing the two groups of scientists together. (Ed Yong has an article about the meeting at National Geographic.)

The paper describes several examples of how synthetic biology could work to help conservation efforts—restoring habitats, supporting endangered species, and even reviving extinct species. It also lays out several examples of how synthetic biology could wreak havoc on the natural world. (The open-access article is very readable. We encourage you to review it or at least take a look at the examples in Table 1.)

The paper and meeting come on the heels of huge media coverage on de-extinction. National Geographic’s April issue on the topic garnered a lot of press and generated public interest. In some cases, these articles say, de-extinction could be just a few years away, if not closer.

The PLoS paper and de-extinction topic seemed to be a great opportunity to speak to Terry Gosliner, the Academy’s Dean of Science and Research, about the subject.

“Do you really want to encounter a saber-toothed cat in Muir Woods?” Terry joked when we sat down.

He sees huge potential risks in using synthetic biology for conservation, but admits that the meeting and discussion are a great idea. “Open dialogue is the only way to explore the topic, see the potential and understand what the concerns and dangers are,” he says. “Bad things happen when there isn’t discussion. Informed dialogue is the best way to deal with controversial issues.”

Terry believes some aspects of synthetic biology in the natural world could work, with appropriate regulation.

But he also sees that synthetic biology may not be the right approach. When thinking about threatened species, the problem is usually “habitat loss, not necessarily genetic constraints.” He uses the re-emergence of California condors as an example of this.

And in some cases, extinction is a natural process, Terry reminds us. Synthetic biology could just be more of humans interfering with nature, and not in a good way.

The resources going toward de-extinction could be better used to protect life before it goes extinct, Terry thinks. “If we use the same resources to address climate change and how we use energy,” Terry says, “We literally could save hundreds and thousands of species.”

And those energy and climate resources could be from synthetic biology. The PLoS paper cites a 2009 report on synthetic biology: “Many believe that synthetic biology will be one of the transformative technologies necessary to combat climate change, energy shortages, food security issues and water deficits.”

What do you think? Can synthetic biology save wildlife? Where do you stand on the issue?

A recent article in PLoS ONE takes the naturalists’ records and compares plants’ blooming times from then to now—specifically 2012, with its record-breaking temperatures.

Not surprisingly, plants are blooming earlier. Previous research has demonstrated this, but not with specific places and plants.

Compared to the timing of spring flowering in Thoreau’s day (in the mid-1800s), native plants such as serviceberry and nodding trillium are blooming 11 days earlier, on average, in the area around Concord, Massachusetts, where Thoreau famously lived and worked.

Nearly a thousand miles away in Wisconsin, where Leopold gathered his records of blooming plants like wild geranium and marsh marigold, the change is even more striking. In 2012, the warmest spring on record for Wisconsin, plants bloomed on average nearly a month earlier than they did just 67 years earlier when Leopold made his last entry.

“We were amazed that wildflowers in Concord flowered almost a month earlier in 2012 than they did in Thoreau’s time or any other recent year,” says lead author Elizabeth Ellwood, “and it turns out the same phenomenon was happening in Wisconsin where Aldo Leopold was recording flowering times. Our data shows that plants keep shifting their flowering times ever earlier as the climate continues to warm.”

I asked Peter Fritsch, curator and chair of the Academy’s Botany Department, about the recent paper.  “The study makes clear that the strong link between increasing spring temperatures and earlier flowering times holds even during the hottest years known; other factors, such as unmet winter chilling requirements, appear not to have constrained or disrupted this link. Whether this link continues at even higher temperatures remains to be seen.

“Although this could mean that plants will be able to continue fairly normal patterns of reproduction, albeit at earlier and earlier times,” he adds, “other environmental factors, some of which could be critical to plant species’ survival, will likely be changing as well. For example, insect pollinator or seed disperser activity may become reduced or mistimed relative to flowering or fruit set.”

The new PLoS ONE study reminded me of the Grinnell Resurvey Project, where UC Berkeley scientists revisited locations documented by Joseph Grinnell a century ago. Grinnell thoroughly recorded fauna in several locations in California and modern-day researchers could document changes from his original observations. Peter says that he knows of no directly comparable studies in our area, that is, those that have looked at the changes in California flora and blooming time over such a long period of time.

Thoreau and Leopold (and Grinnell, for that matter) likely had no idea their records would prove to be so helpful in this particular way, decades later, Peter says. “This study also provides neat insight into one way that science works. In this case, I doubt very much whether it would have occurred to Thoreau that the notes he was recording on flowering times could be used for assessing long-term changes in climate. Yet, without his basic data and that from Leopold, the current study would not be nearly as conclusive.”

One last note from Peter: One of the co-authors on the study, Charles Davis, has Academy ties. He was a Summer Systematics Institute intern in the 1990s!