3 ms·
For 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? T
by gradschoolfail 2y ago
For 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