From Bench to Biosphere: ELSI of Conservation Genomics, Genetic Rescue, De-Extinction, and Assisted Evolution

Conservation biology has acquired an active engineering dimension. Whole-genome sequencing of critically endangered populations, CRISPR-mediated introgression of disease-resistance alleles, cryopreservation of gametes and somatic cells, assisted gene flow to accelerate climate adaptation, and the partial resurrection of recently extinct taxa through genomic reconstruction are no longer thought experiments. Programs targeting the northern white rhinoceros, the woolly mammoth, the black-footed ferret, the American chestnut, and reef-building corals under thermal stress are generating not only scientific data but urgent ethical, legal, and social questions that existing governance frameworks were not designed to answer.This Research Topic invites contributions that examine those questions with the same rigor researchers bring to the underlying science. Who authorizes the release of genomically modified individuals into protected habitats, and on what evidentiary standard? How should assisted evolution and de-extinction be evaluated under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing, the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety, CITES, and national endangered species statutes? What intellectual property claims, if any, can attach to engineered or reconstructed organisms, and how do those claims interact with Indigenous data sovereignty and traditional ecological knowledge? What obligations of stewardship and reversibility follow the creation of organisms carrying substantial extinct-species genomic content, and who bears them when programs span decades and jurisdictions? How are public consent, community participation, and intergenerational equity to be operationalized for interventions whose effects are, by design, ecological and evolutionary?We welcome empirical, doctrinal, comparative, and conceptual work grounded in specific programs or regulatory contexts. Topics of interest include: governance of gene drives and engineered alleles in wild populations; consent and benefit-sharing with Indigenous and local communities; IUCN, EBV, and IPBES policy interfaces; biosecurity and dual-use risk in synthetic biology applied to wildlife; ethics of triage, prioritization, and “moral hazard” arguments against de-extinction; liability and insurance for ecological release; cryobanking governance and posthumous genetic material; data-sharing norms for sensitive genomic data on endangered species; and the philosophical status of engineered, hybrid, or resurrected taxa.Purely technical molecular or population-genetic studies without an explicit ELSI dimension fall outside the scope of this collection. Topic editors: Dov Greenbaum Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81523/from-bench-to-biosphere-elsi-of-conservation-genomics-genetic-rescue-de-extinction-and-assisted-evolution