I’ve been fascinated with science in general, and genetic engineering in particular, since I was 12 or so. I remember how children who were insulin-dependent diabetics rarely survived to adulthood, and a diabetes diagnosis was a death sentence. There wasn’t enough insulin to go around because it had to be harvested from butchered livestock, and many diabetics were allergic to non-human insulin. I remember in the mid-1980s when I learned that Genentech and Eli Lily had started producing insulin by the vat. I was excited for two reasons, one, because countless lives would be saved, and two, because it was the first instance of a trans-genic organism going mainstream.
Most people don’t realize that millions of people all over the world owe their lives to trillions of yeast and bacteria that have had the human insulin gene planted in their genomes and produce insulin as a result.
I say this all as a preface to this article, which covers the decades of work done by two scientists who were funded by a man who was determined to save the American Chestnut tree. The American Chestnut all but disappeared a hundred years ago due to importation of a fungus on Chinese chestnuts that produces oxalates that help it “digest” tree bark. Most trees are not detrimentally affected by this fungus, but the American Chestnut utterly lacks immunity and is killed by the fungus in just a few years.
The chestnut tree, it’s lumber and it’s nuts, were a huge part of the diet and economy of Native Americans and European settlers for hundreds of years. The deaths of entire forests of chestnuts in the Appalachias cast millions into abject poverty and hunger, leaving them no choice but to work in coal mines or move away.
In an attempt to bring back the American Chestnut, two scientists have borrowed a gene from wheat that produces an enzyme that breaks down the oxalates produced by the fungus, and inserted it into the genome of one of the few remaining wild Chestnuts (the tree has since died). When the chestnut flowers and is pollinated, half of the resulting offspring have the immunity to the fungus, the other half are wild type.
This is an opportunity to bring back, through scientific intervention, a tree that was eliminated from our forests due to human intervention. Many people are resistant because the tree is a GMO, and I get their concern, but this isn’t a GMO rugged to withstand pesticides and herbicides. This is a GMO that would be important in restoring the forests of the Atlantic seaboard to their former glory, that could bring traditional foods and gathering practices back to tribes who have all but lost their connection to a vital part of their past. The American chestnut grows rapidly and produces thousands of delicious high-protein nuts; it grows straight and tall and it’s wood and resistant to rot so it could be grown as a lumber tree again; and it’s rapid growth makes it an excellent carbon sink during a time when we are concerned about CO2 and climate change. The benefits to people, to forestry, and to the environment are profound.
The scientists who are trying to bring back the American Chestnut have refused to patent it. They have published their work and shared it in the public domain to prevent anyone else from patenting it (They think Monsanto is evil). Their chestnut tree and nuts are being rigorously tested by three different Government agencies and is currently under evaluation by the EPA for de-regulation. Some day, the new American Chestnut may be available for purchase at a garden center near you. A decade or two from now, “chestnut” could rise in the American consciousness back to being a tree and a nut, and not just a color or some meaningless lyric in a holiday song (“chestnuts roasting in an open fire”).
Read more about it in The NY Times article, here.
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