The national discussion on strategies for reversing climate change often centers on reduced emissions, such as is discussed in detail in a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. An important alternative or adjunct approach is "Negative emissions technologies" (NETs), or in other words, removing and sequestering carbon dioxide from the air. NET strategies will need to play a significant role in mitigating climate change, as explored in detail in another new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Many recent studies suggest that the natural processes for capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could be upregulated. The major catalyst for pulling CO2 from the atmosphere into stored forms (ocean or terrestrial) is known as Rubisco, for ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase. It is the most plentiful protein catalyst (enzyme) on the planet. It is also often described as a notoriously a slow catalyst. Molecular biology experiments conducted in a number of laboratories suggest that strategic genetic modifications in naturally occurring Rubisco could increase its carbon capture capability. In addition, other naturally occurring enzymes also recover CO2 from the atmosphere, for example in soil organisms, and have been shown to be remarkably rapid catalysis for removing carbon dioxide from the air. These provide a different potential proof of principle that biological recovery of CO2 from the atmosphere could be made more efficient.

While tuning biological carbon fixation for mitigating climate change holds great potential, the approach rests on very recent discoveries from a handful of widely dispersed academic laboratories employing diverse experimental approaches. To accelerate the exploration of these strategies, we propose to convene a workshop to explore these basic science observations. We propose to explore in great technical detail recent experimental indications that biological removal of carbon from the atmosphere can be upregulated through genetic modifications, with the hope of building strong consensus around the key observations, their interpretations, and identifying key experiments needed to develop a clearer picture of what organisms and what key mutations hold the most potential for absorbing excess anthropomorphic carbon. Such a workshop could represent the first of a series of steps to develop a sound bio-based strategy to adjust overall carbon cycles to lower atmospheric carbon.