Tree vaccines and gene-edited butterflies among biotechnology projects funded by UK ‘invention agency’

The swallowtail butterfly will be gene-edited . Photograph: Allan Drewitt/Natural England/PA View image in fullscreen The swallowtail butterfly will be gene-edited . Photograph: Allan Drewitt/Natural England/PA Tree vaccines and gene-edited butterflies among biotechnology projects funded by UK ‘invention agency’ Exclusive: The tax-funded brainchild of Dominic Cummings hopes to find ways to speed up wild species’ evolution Vaccines for ash trees, skin treatments for newts and gene-edited swallowtail butterflies are among 14 tax-funded projects from the UK’s “invention agency” aiming to accelerate nature’s ability to adapt to the climate crisis. The £54m accelerated adaptation programme from the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) – a public body that funds high-risk, high-reward tech projects – aims to investigate applications of biotechnology that can speed up wild species’ evolution and help them to adapt to new threats such as global warming and disease. The 14 teams announced on Monday will receive a share of an initial £30m in grants over the next two years. They will develop tools to protect native British wildlife species, including the English oak tree and critical pollinators such as the buff-tailed bumblebee, said Yannick Wurm, the director of the accelerated adaptation programme at Aria. View image in fullscreen A buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) on Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, England. Photograph: Nick Upton/AlamyThe world’s natural environments are changing so rapidly owing to the climate crisis and human pressures that many species can no longer adapt quickly enough, said Wurm, a professor of evolutionary genomics at Queen Mary University, London. “This cohort is a first exploration of how we can harness some of the powers of biotechnology to responsibly help wild animals and plants to overcome challenges they face,” he added. The projects aim to work alongside conventional nature conservation measures, such as protected reserves, to give environmentalists a new set of “precision tools” that Wurm compares to mRNA vaccines for humans. Aria is the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, the former chief adviser to Boris Johnson, who said it would fund “crazy” ideas that could “restore Britain’s place as a scientific superpower”. The publicly funded body has attracted criticism for its research into controversial geoengineering techniques and grants that have given millions in UK taxpayer money to US tech companies and venture capital firms. Matt Clifford, Aria’s chair, was forced to stand down this month over what one senior MP called a “clear conflict of interest” after taking a job with Anthropic, the developer of the AI chatbot Claude.