Directed panspermia can be interpreted as the deliberate transport of microorganisms in space to be used as introduced species on lifeless planets.
Interestingly, Shklovskii and Sagan in 1966, and Crick and Orgel before them in 1973, theorized how life on Earth may have been seeded deliberately by alien civilizations, from elsewhere in the universe.
The idea of Directed Panspermia can be traced back to the science fiction work called Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, published in 1930.