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The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree
- jseliger 2y agohttps://archive.ph/VRCJf https://archive.ph/VRCJf
- dang 2y agoRelated: Setback in the "American Chestnut Project" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39044498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39044498 - Jan 2024 (2 comments) Genetic engineering was meant to save chestnut trees. Then there was a mistake. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38758522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38758522 - Dec 2023 (11 comments) America lost the chestnut, its "perfect tree" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38754581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38754581 - Dec 2023 (176 comments) TACF is no longer supporting development of D58 American chestnut trees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38573765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38573765 - Dec 2023 (58 comments) The American chestnut tree is coming back. Who is it for? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576771 - Sept 2023 (4 comments) Technology Puts American Chestnut Trees on the Comeback Trail - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34181235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34181235 - Dec 2022 (1 comment) Biotech chestnut tree poised to restore lost ecosystems and biodiversity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34143557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34143557 - Dec 2022 (1 comment) Gene editing could revive a nearly lost tree. Not everyone is on board - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32665955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32665955 - Aug 2022 (1 comment) American chestnut tree in Centreville is the 'holy grail' for conservationists - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32621570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32621570 - Aug 2022 (155 comments) American chestnut - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30333498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30333498 - Feb 2022 (73 comments) The demise and potential revival of the American chestnut - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26441593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26441593 - March 2021 (86 comments) Blight wiped out the American chestnut. Scientists are close to bringing it back - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21846891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21846891 - Dec 2019 (2 comments) American chestnut poised for return to America's forests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855137 - March 2017 (1 comment) American chestnut trees are “technically extinct” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13478910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13478910 - Jan 2017 (120 comments)
- rulalala 2y agoIMHO this is a romantic effort, no one can plant a tree species at such a scale.
- buescher 2y agoA country of two million people managed to plant six million trees in one day in 2008 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE4AI49U/ https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE4AI49U/
- kwhitefoot 2y agoHow many of them survived more than a year?
- woleium 2y agoi imagine most of them, Macedonia is not such a dangerous place to live. /s
- bagels 2y agoMany of them. Do you have information about it that the rest of us don't? "Fifty million trees planted- the government said in 2014- with a success rate of 61% compared to the average European planting success rate of 35%."
- kwhitefoot 2y ago> Do you have information about it that the rest of us don't? No, that's why I asked. I was aware of the less than perfect record elsewhere wondered if they had done better.
- hoseja 2y agoPlanting trees results in inferior forests. A healthy forest comes from natural forestation that goes through pioneer species stages.
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- squiffsquiff 2y ago[flagged]
- gradschoolfail 2y agoFor those, like me, who wondered, why not just reclone the original Darling 58? Here is the answer from TACF: “ Why not then return to the “real” Darling 58? The first reason is that the Darling 58 also uses the 35S constitutive promoter which appears to result in a variety of metabolic costs to the tree and likely causes the majority of performance problems observed in the Darling line. Secondly, there are only a handful, and perhaps even only one, D58 tree(s) in existence. These trees are at either the T0 or T1 stage (the original event and first-generation offspring). If work is to start over at those early diversification stages, it makes sense to focus on new OxO lines that express the gene only in tissues infected with blight. Confining OxO expression to blight infected tissues should reduce the metabolic cost of expressing this gene, thus these new lines are more likely to have enhanced forest competitiveness.”
- Dr_Birdbrain 2y agoI’m still confused, why can’t they return to the real Darling 58? Are they saying even the real 58 is not that good, and if they are going to rewind that far back they might as well start from scratch?
- gradschoolfail 2y agoI reread the above and realized that TACF isn’t as clear as they should/could be: they are supporting a newer strain, win3.12 [0], which, as alluded to above, expresses the OxO gene only when infected. This is metabolically less expensive. Thus there is no reason to spend effort looking for the Darling 58. I also gather from other sources that the TACF want to downplay that they are switching to this new strain, that this development of finding a bug in Darling 54 is a political salve[1] —- maybe they don’t want to offend somebody? [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34841616/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34841616/ [1] https://ambrook.com/research/sustainability/GMO-chestnut-controversy https://ambrook.com/research/sustainability/GMO-chestnut-con...
- Dr_Birdbrain 2y agoGreat resources for further reading, thanks. Win3.12 sounds like… a windows version? Lol
- sidewndr46 2y agoSo this group wants to propagate a GMO to "save" a tree species? Which is of course impossible with current mechanisms. Although it seems that producing a near replacement tree is likely within reach. But they can't even seem to be sure what edited organism they are trying to propagate? This is why I do not trust GMO stuff. I have no special credentials (just an undergraduate degree) but even at that level it was clearly stated to me that if you're going to do research, you need to keep clear documentation about what you are doing so it is reproducible.
- bluGill 2y agohow is GMO different from normal breeding where we hane no clue what mutations happen. Normal breeding doesn't even attempt toestudy for safety. Yes the science should have been better done but the worst case of GMO is the same as everything else.
- causality0 2y agoFor some reason, when you take a process that has traditionally been done with a baseball bat and start doing it with a knife, suddenly everyone comes out of the woodwork to talk about how your knife is too dull and it should either be done with a scalpel or not at all.
- interroboink 2y agoJust to tap the brakes for anyone wanting to take your analogy too far: a lot of objections about GMO in general are about the accelerated rate at which the changes can be made, relative to traditional methods (such as breeding). The worry is that we might be introducing altered genomes at a rate faster than we can observe and understand the downstream impacts. So in those arguments (which are the majority, in GMO debates I've encountered), it's not about the knife being too dull, but being too sharp.
- bluGill 2y ago> the accelerated rate at which the changes can be made, relative to traditional methods Citation needed there. I know the claim is common, but GMO is inserting one known mutation. How many mutations are there from parent to children is not something I can find a citation for, but since most mutations do nothing (or kill the child) there must be a lot of mutations involved in traditional breeding not one which means that GMO is much decelerated vs traditional breeding.