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Speaker 1: Okay, welcome to the crime pace, but botany doesn't podcast.

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I'm here on a cold West Texas day with Eric Carlson, PhD,

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student at sunny ESF A College of Environmental Sciences and

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Forestry and lovely, smooth, loving, caring nurturing Syracuse, New York.

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Does that sound like a Do you think that's an

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adequate way to sum up Syracuse? Would you call it nurturing?

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Is it tender?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? I would call it tender. Yeah, that's a beautiful description.

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Speaker 1: It is a tender. Okay, that's great. Do you guys

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have any massage parlors there?

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Speaker 2: I'm sure there's a few.

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Speaker 1: There's probably quite a few anyway. Okay, So Eric, I

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just want to ask before we get started, what happened?

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What happened? You work with American chestnuts. Everybody was so

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excited about this transgenic chestnut that was able to resist

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Chryphinectara parasitica, the blight by I believe it was digesting

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secreting enzymes that digest the oxidalic acid that the fungus produces.

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But then everything there was I saw this in the news,

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and of course they didn't explain what happened. But they

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said that there was some discrepancy and you know, data

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was wrong and the whole thing had to be stopped.

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What happened.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So about a year ago we made a discovery

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that one of our lines that we were using for

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government approval referred to as Darling fifty eight, it was

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actually a closely related line called Darling fifty four. And

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so basically it was a big naming issue where we

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needed to go back into our documents and change the

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names from Darling fifty eight to Darling fifty four, which

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is a little embarrassing but definitely not the end of

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the world.

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Speaker 1: And so what with Darling fifty eight and Darling fifty four,

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I mean, does anybody know they? First off, they both

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have this allele right that codes for the digestion of

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oxalic acid that renders the fungus just the minor pest

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instead of this death now right, they both have that

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copy of that allele. Isn't an allele? Can you tell us?

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Tell us again, give us a refresher on and what's

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going on here with this transgenic chestnut tree.

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Speaker 2: Sure, American chestnut is highly susceptible to a necrotrophic fungus

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called Cryphenectria parasitica. The fungus attacks the tree by subcreting

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oxalic acid, which is toxic to tree tissues. And so

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what we did is we inserted a gene from wheat

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that codes for an enzyme called oxalate oxidase. And what

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that enzyme does is it oxidizes that oxalic acid and

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converts it into hydrogen peroxide and CO two, which are

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not harmful to the plant. And both Darling fifty eight

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and Darling fifty four have the exact same copy of

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that gene and it's actually in the same exact clonal background,

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so they were that gene was inserted into a bunch

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of cells and there are independent events within those cells.

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And so both of these fifty four and fifty eight

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came from that same experiment, So they're basically genetically identical

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except for the place where that gene landed in the genome.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so this wow, Okay, So it's not it's at

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different locations, different losi in the genome, and that was

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that's the only difference, the main difference between fifty eight

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and fifty four. Yep, that's right, all right, And this

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is a dominant Allele, right, and so to refresh everybody's

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memory to get dominant recessive, you know, a whole mental thing.

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He's fucking around with the pea flowers, right, the quote

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godfather of modern genetics. And so this is a dominant,

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it's not recessive. So you only need one copy. You know,

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you can be heterozygous for this trait if you're a

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chestnut tree, and it'll come true, but you know you've

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got to you need that one copy. And if you

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only stand a fifty to fifty chance of inheriting that copy,

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if say, a transgenic chestnut breeds with a non transgenic

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chestnut that's still susceptible to the blight, is that correct?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Chestnuts are diploid, so they've got two

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sets of chromosomes, and this oxogene is only inserted into

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one of those sets of chromosomes. And so when the

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tree with that single gene goes through myosis to produce

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gametes either pollen or egg cells, only fifty percent of

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those halfloid cells will have that gene insertion. So therefore

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only fifty percent of the offspring from those trees will

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inherit the gte.

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Speaker 1: Okay, cool and then when you guys are in I

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got a question though, too, when you're inserting these genes,

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I mean, are Darling fifty eight? Are they all the

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same phenotype? They're all the same clone.

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Speaker 2: Yes, they're They're all the same clone. That's right, because

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the cells are called somatic embryos, and they're all clonally

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identical to each other.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so there's a lack of genetic diversity, but I'm

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sure you guys, I mean, I'm sure that was one

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of the first thing you guys thought of, and you were,

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you know, planning how to basically get more genetic diversity

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using this single clone and then create you know, a

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good gene pool that all has this single copy of Eele.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's right. We're not making a bunch of

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copies of that original transgenic event. What we do from

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that original transformant is we get pollen from it, and

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then we can take that pollen and cross it onto

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wild type mother trees in designated field plots, and then

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they'll produce chestnuts, fifty percent of them being transgendic and

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fifty percent of them not.

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Speaker 1: Okay, but that and and that's the part. It's basically

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having to then find which ones got the gene and

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which ones didn't. That's like the what's what takes time?

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Speaker 2: Right, and each generation of out crossing, you're incorporating more

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and more genetic diversity from those mother trees.

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Speaker 1: Would it have been possible? I mean, fuck, I guess

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I should have listened to our podcast that we did

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two or three years ago on this, But would it

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have been possible to just take a bunch of different

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individual phenotypes and of wild American chestnuts, pure American chestnuts,

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not crossbread with Chinese which is resistant to Cryphonecta parasitica.

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Chinese chestnuts are resistant to Cryphonectria parasitica because they've had

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ten million years of coevolution in the same ecosystem. Would

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it have been possible to take that single copy you

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know that that what is it the oxogene? You said, yes,

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would it? Would it have been possible to take that

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in just in certain to like a number of different

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phenotypes of wild American chestnut and so you had more

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to work with, not just this one fifty eight clone

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or what.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that is possible, And that's actually something we've been

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working on for a few years now, is getting more

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of those sematic embryos into culture, so we can do

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new transformations into new clonal backgrounds. The Darling line though,

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comes from one sematic embryo line called Ellis, And that's

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a really important line because we got the genome sequence

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and annotated for that for that clone. So that makes

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genome analysis of our transgenic events much simpler. Having that

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annotated gene, you.

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Speaker 1: Have the whole genome, every single coding and non coding

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region of that genome basically map.

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Speaker 2: Yep, and it's publicly available on phytozone.

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Speaker 1: Okay. And what was the name of that you said.

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Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's called phytosomee.

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Speaker 1: The specific line was began with an E.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called Ellis.

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Speaker 1: Ellis Okay, cool, all right, So what are the differences

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between fifty eight and fifty four? Are these basically just

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these were different experiments where you were shooting that oxogene

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in there and seeing where it would end up or

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were you was there like control for you were able

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to control where it ended up or what.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So the method we use for inserting the gene

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is called agrobacterium mediated transformation. And is that No, it's not.

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It's kind of more of the classical genetic transformation method.

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You use this soil bacteria called agrobacterium. In nature, it's

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the causal agent of crown gall disease, and so it

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inserts in nature, it will insert tumor inducings which express

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all these vital hormones that cause these cancers like gross

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called gulls. And so what genetic engineers is they took

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out those tumor inducing genes and then you can insert

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your genes of interest into that agrobacterium and then it

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will insert those genes into plants for you. And that's

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a semi random process. Those insertions go in each independent line,

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the insertion will be in a different place. So you

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have to kind of go through and determine where those

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insertions are after you do them, you can't target them.

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Speaker 1: And where does it? Does it matter where on the

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genome that this gene is inserted from what you can tell?

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And how does it affect other things? You know? So,

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and first off, how many base pairs are in the chestnut?

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How many base pairs long as the chestnut genome?

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Speaker 2: It's sixteen megabases.

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Speaker 1: Sixteen yes, yep, sixteen million letters. Okay, and so anyway.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I think it might be billion, sixteen billions

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more more cracky because each chromosome is several million holy shit.

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Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well I could check that. We could

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check that later. But but yeah, so depending I mean,

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does how much does location uh of insertion on the

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genome matter?

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Speaker 2: It matters a lot. And they're actually there's a name

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for it, they called position effects, and they can have

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a few different differences between them depending on where they're

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in asserted. It can have effects on a gene expression level.

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So if the insertion goes somewhere that's like a tightly

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bound like U chromatin, you're not going to get good

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expression because it's like tightly bound ding a. But if

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it's somewhere maybe further towards like the ends of the chromosomes,

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places where there's more active transcription, you're going to get

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higher levels of expression. And you can also have a

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diletorious effects if those insertions land in like the middle

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of a gene or the cause like deletions of like

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parts of the chrome zone. That's something that can happen too,

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but that's that's generally not what happens.

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Speaker 1: So location matters a bunch, it does, Okay, all right,

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by the way, a megabase. Yeah, its million base pairs

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so that was was it sixteen megabases long?

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Speaker 2: Maybe maybe it's gigabases.

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Speaker 1: Gigabaite, Okay, either way, we can I'm looking online. It

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says the American chestnut genome is approximately seven hundred and

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three million base pairs long based on the assembled sequence

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available on fytozone.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so that that is the correct number.

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Speaker 1: Seven hundred and three megabase. Okay, all right, Well either way,

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so so location matters a bunch. So there was obviously

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a reason why Darling fifty eight was chosen as opposed

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to Darling fifty four. Why was that?

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Speaker 2: So with Darling fifty eight, the tDNA insertion dot OXO

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insertion was in a space between genes where it wasn't interrupting,

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and you have like the native gene sequences in the chromosome.

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Speaker 1: So that was the.

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Speaker 2: Reason why Darling fifty eight was originally chosen.

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Speaker 1: Right, Because you're just you're just slapping this stuff in anywhere.

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That's kind of where the lack of control comes in,

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I guess, which is a little worrying. And I'm sure

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the technology will be improved, but this gene, you know,

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you can't really control too much where this this gene

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ends up, and if it ends up in the middle

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of the instruction manual for another you know of another

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gene that's coding for something really important, it renders that

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gene useless basically, or it'll just fuck things up or what.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean potentially that's something that could happen, and

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I can understand why it sounds a little bit scary,

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but in the grand scheme of genetic changes, it's actually

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really small, especially when you can compare it to traditional breeding,

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or especially hybrid breeding, where you're crossing two different species together.

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You can have massive genetic changes where there's entire restructurings

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of chromosomes and things of that nature that interrupt thousands

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of genes at a time, as opposed to maybe just

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like one or two.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot more control than because you're only

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inserting one gene. Versus if you're hybridizing American chestnuts with

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Chinese chestnut, you don't know what the fuck you're going

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to get. You're inserting a lot of different genes with

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absolutely no control of where they end up.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the scale of changes is completely different between the two.

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Is much smaller. With the insertion with Agrobacterium.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so, but any anyway, I mean, you guys picked

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fifty eight for a reason, and then there was a

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mistake where it was actually fifty four, which of course

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there's no way to tell until you look at the

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you analyze it, right, you look at the DNA and see, oh,

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this is actually how do you think that happened?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So, Darling, fifty eight and fifty four were developed

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at the same time. They were the transformation as occurred

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in the same experiment, and they were regenerated at the

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same time, and they were both promising events. We were

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developing both of them at the same time because they

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both had a single copy of that oxogene. They had

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high expression. We measured high levels of mRNA expression, and

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they had high levels of blight tolerance when we screened

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them with anoculation essay. So we were developing both at

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the same time, and at a certain step in the

241
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process you put them into highlight growth chambers to produce

242
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pollen to go on the field and make those crosses

243
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like we were talking about. And so we were doing

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crosses with fifty eight and fifty four at the same time,

245
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and so there's kind of two main possibilities of where

246
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this switch happened. It either happened during the propagation stage

247
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like coming out of tissue culture and prop getting in pots,

248
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or it happened during the pollen collection stage where a

249
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tube of fifty four Pallen was mislabeled as fifty eight.

250
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Speaker 1: But the dishes got swapped. It's all happened. Maybe the

251
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petriet dishes got swapped. Maybe the pots. You know, how

252
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are the weed laws in New York. Nobody was blunted

253
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when they were doing this, probably because right, it wasn't

254
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the the you know, the pot. How long has pot

255
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been legal?

256
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Speaker 2: And yeah, I'm not sure the last few years. But

257
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this this switch that happened that this was eight years ago.

258
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Speaker 1: Eight year see, so it couldn't have been. Nobody was

259
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blunted when they were doing it. Was a simple mistake.

260
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I can see myself making a fucking mistake like that.

261
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Speaker 2: It's okay, These types of mistakes happened all the time.

262
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Speaker 1: Happened.

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Speaker 2: It's it's not great that it happens, but they definitely

264
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do happen, and everyone's out a story of something like

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this happening.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you know, sometimes the shit hits the

267
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fan and what I don't think this, you know, I

268
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don't think it deserved this because they the way they

269
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made it sound in the press. And of course, when

270
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you're doing science, you should always be one hundred percent

271
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on top of your shit. I'm joking around for any

272
00:16:05,440 --> 00:16:09,159
negative nancies out there in the artists. But but you know,

273
00:16:09,200 --> 00:16:11,919
they made it sound like, oh, it doesn't work, the

274
00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:14,879
gene doesn't work, this transgendic. It's all been a mess.

275
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It just it's it was. It's back to just you know, slamming,

276
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you know, poling from Chinese chestnuts into into egg cells

277
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of American chestnuts and just hoping for the best. Back

278
00:16:28,039 --> 00:16:30,320
to that because we just have to abandon which is

279
00:16:31,279 --> 00:16:35,240
that's shit for brain, that's not you know. So it

280
00:16:35,320 --> 00:16:38,960
turns out it's a simple mistake to condemn those I mean,

281
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that's my opinion, to condemn the whole project and grant

282
00:16:43,000 --> 00:16:44,440
that I'm only hearing your set of the story, but

283
00:16:44,480 --> 00:16:47,879
this just doesn't sound. It's my hopes are still with us,

284
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because I want I want to see chestnuts at some point,

285
00:16:50,919 --> 00:16:53,759
even if they're transgenic. I want to see them, you know,

286
00:16:53,840 --> 00:16:58,440
these towering monolithic beasts that have been able to get

287
00:16:58,480 --> 00:17:02,120
around that ten years, the ten million years that they

288
00:17:02,120 --> 00:17:04,720
missed out on of co evolving with this fungus, you know.

289
00:17:05,640 --> 00:17:08,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and this this name switch, it has no

290
00:17:09,039 --> 00:17:12,200
going on all the data that we've collected over the

291
00:17:12,279 --> 00:17:15,519
years on these trees, because even though there was this switch,

292
00:17:15,680 --> 00:17:18,559
it was it's all consistent data. It wasn't like some

293
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was fifty eight and some was fifty four. Luckily everything

294
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is just fifty four, so the data is still completely valid.

295
00:17:26,359 --> 00:17:30,640
And that data shows that these trees have much higher

296
00:17:30,759 --> 00:17:34,480
levels of blight tolerants than wild type American chestnuts, and

297
00:17:34,599 --> 00:17:37,000
also that they're very safe. We did lots of safety

298
00:17:37,039 --> 00:17:41,000
testing showing that they're not harmful to things like insects

299
00:17:41,680 --> 00:17:48,599
like caterpillars or bumblebees or wood frog tadpoles, and so

300
00:17:49,160 --> 00:17:52,200
that's all the stuff that is important to know for

301
00:17:52,319 --> 00:17:55,599
things like government regulators and of course the public too.

302
00:17:55,640 --> 00:17:57,119
The public wants to biologies.

303
00:17:57,200 --> 00:18:00,119
Speaker 1: So you're wrecking So you're not wrecking a fucking ecosystem

304
00:18:00,200 --> 00:18:02,279
any more than it's already been wrecked. I mean, the

305
00:18:02,279 --> 00:18:04,759
whole ecosystem on the East Coast has been fucking wrecked.

306
00:18:05,559 --> 00:18:09,559
I mean, you know, the HDC as I refer to

307
00:18:09,599 --> 00:18:13,680
it has been out there for how long? With five

308
00:18:13,759 --> 00:18:16,400
hundred years? About a little five hundred and twenty, So

309
00:18:16,519 --> 00:18:17,960
you know they've had they got a head start on

310
00:18:17,960 --> 00:18:20,599
the East coast before they could really start ruining the

311
00:18:20,640 --> 00:18:25,960
ecosystems of the West coast. But but you know, yeah,

312
00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:27,319
you want to you want to test, You want to

313
00:18:27,319 --> 00:18:29,559
make sure there's because everything in an ecosystem is connected.

314
00:18:29,599 --> 00:18:31,519
You want to make sure you're not causing a cascade

315
00:18:31,559 --> 00:18:35,319
of shitty effects. How long is the oxogene? How many

316
00:18:35,319 --> 00:18:36,359
base pairs are we talking?

317
00:18:37,279 --> 00:18:40,599
Speaker 2: So the coding region is six hundred and seventy five

318
00:18:40,799 --> 00:18:41,640
base person.

319
00:18:41,480 --> 00:18:44,720
Speaker 1: Oh, it's nothing so small in the non coding region.

320
00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:52,960
Speaker 2: Well, are you talking about the promoter and the terminator? Yes, yeah,

321
00:18:53,160 --> 00:18:55,519
you know, I'm not sure for for Darling, I think

322
00:18:55,519 --> 00:18:58,359
it's probably in the realm of like eight hundred something

323
00:18:58,440 --> 00:19:01,960
like that. So the promoter about the same for the terminator.

324
00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:05,599
Speaker 1: And those would be of course as this as this

325
00:19:05,640 --> 00:19:08,319
tree becomes part of the ecosystem, and you know pollen

326
00:19:08,440 --> 00:19:11,880
has exchanged over generations, those non coding regions will be

327
00:19:11,920 --> 00:19:15,839
subject to change. But the oxogene will be selected for.

328
00:19:17,079 --> 00:19:20,279
Speaker 2: Well, I hope not, because those non coding regions, they're

329
00:19:20,559 --> 00:19:24,079
kind of what regulate the expression of the gene. So

330
00:19:25,519 --> 00:19:28,319
the selection would probably be to keep those intact so

331
00:19:28,359 --> 00:19:31,599
they can keep that gene functioning properly. So if those

332
00:19:31,680 --> 00:19:35,519
ended up getting mutated and the oxygen stopped working, then

333
00:19:35,559 --> 00:19:37,720
those offspring would probably be selected against.

334
00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:40,559
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, okay, I see that. So but either way,

335
00:19:40,599 --> 00:19:43,079
I mean a lot of this just sounds like you

336
00:19:43,279 --> 00:19:49,519
create the pollen, you create the phenotype that's resistant, you

337
00:19:49,559 --> 00:19:51,480
create a couple of them, you put them back into

338
00:19:51,480 --> 00:19:55,079
the ecosystem, and then you know where there's the highest

339
00:19:55,079 --> 00:19:58,160
diversity of remaining chestnut trees, and then you just let

340
00:19:59,559 --> 00:20:02,400
you let natural selection do its work, and anything that

341
00:20:02,440 --> 00:20:06,279
doesn't inherit that oxygene will eventually get blight and you know,

342
00:20:06,359 --> 00:20:11,279
be terminated and just reduced to you know, continuously you know,

343
00:20:11,880 --> 00:20:15,559
sprouting stumps and anything that inherits it will then become

344
00:20:15,599 --> 00:20:17,400
full trees and keep you know, it's going to take

345
00:20:17,400 --> 00:20:20,480
a while, but maybe in five hundred years you could

346
00:20:20,480 --> 00:20:23,160
have this back. But you know, you've got to start somewhere, right.

347
00:20:23,440 --> 00:20:25,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's and that's a good point too, that

348
00:20:25,519 --> 00:20:30,400
this is it's a starting point. So there will need

349
00:20:30,440 --> 00:20:33,599
to be selection on the front end as well. So

350
00:20:33,759 --> 00:20:37,599
we're doing these crosses with darling and producing lots of offspring,

351
00:20:38,319 --> 00:20:42,440
and we do see variability in the offspring in a

352
00:20:42,480 --> 00:20:44,519
bunch of different things. And that's what you expect at

353
00:20:44,559 --> 00:20:47,599
the beginning of a breeding program, especially when you're using

354
00:20:48,119 --> 00:20:52,599
diverse genotypes for crosses. You see lots of variation. You

355
00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:54,079
see variation in height.

356
00:20:54,359 --> 00:20:57,000
Speaker 1: What kind of work? Yeah, so variation in height. And

357
00:20:57,039 --> 00:21:01,559
then I mean, are you seeing any trees that you know,

358
00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:05,359
when they become a dults that look like because Chinese

359
00:21:05,440 --> 00:21:09,319
chestnuts are just these they're cool, they're great, they're you know,

360
00:21:09,440 --> 00:21:13,960
produce edible fruits, but edible seeds, but they're not that

361
00:21:14,039 --> 00:21:15,920
impressive of a tree. I mean, is it You're not

362
00:21:15,920 --> 00:21:19,759
getting anything that looks like that? Are you?

363
00:21:19,799 --> 00:21:22,720
Speaker 2: No? Well, I, like I said, there is actually a

364
00:21:22,759 --> 00:21:26,599
bit of variability. So some of the offspring are quite

365
00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:29,519
a bit shorter than like the non transient offspring, and

366
00:21:29,519 --> 00:21:32,160
then some are the same. And what you need to

367
00:21:32,160 --> 00:21:35,079
do is select for the offspring that have the good

368
00:21:35,119 --> 00:21:40,119
growth characteristics to carry forward into the breeding program. It's actually,

369
00:21:40,119 --> 00:21:43,839
it's probably actually a pretty common thing in any genetically

370
00:21:43,880 --> 00:21:48,039
engineered plant. There's actually this example of this GMO clover

371
00:21:48,519 --> 00:21:51,119
in New Zealand where they were modifying it to have

372
00:21:51,279 --> 00:21:55,799
increased tannins in the leaves to reduce bloating in the

373
00:21:55,839 --> 00:22:00,640
livestock that eat the clover and in these original trains because.

374
00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:02,559
Speaker 1: That increased tannons would reduce bloating.

375
00:22:03,359 --> 00:22:06,720
Speaker 2: Yes, they increased tannons in the leaf tissue reduces the

376
00:22:06,880 --> 00:22:10,480
bloating and actually the methane production within livestock that eat it.

377
00:22:11,200 --> 00:22:16,839
But their GMO version had a reduction of vigor in

378
00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:19,319
like the early stages it was it didn't grow as

379
00:22:19,359 --> 00:22:23,079
well as a non transgendic but through several generations of

380
00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:27,519
selective crossing and selecting for vigor, they were able to

381
00:22:27,559 --> 00:22:31,200
regain all of that performance of the original line. And

382
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:36,599
that's typical for any type of project using these molecular

383
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:39,759
tools to create new events, you need to do hard

384
00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:43,480
selection at the beginning, and that's kind of the step

385
00:22:43,519 --> 00:22:45,759
that we're at now that we're starting to produce lots

386
00:22:45,759 --> 00:22:49,279
of offspring. We're going through a selection stage and getting

387
00:22:49,359 --> 00:22:51,880
picking out the best growers that have the best play

388
00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:55,279
resistance and then using their pollen for the future crosses.

389
00:22:55,359 --> 00:22:57,400
Speaker 1: It's going to be interesting to see because it's kind

390
00:22:57,400 --> 00:22:58,799
of one of these things where you just put it

391
00:22:58,799 --> 00:23:00,920
out there, you do the first steps, and then the

392
00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:03,799
ecosystem kind of does the rest. Like the ecosystem is

393
00:23:03,839 --> 00:23:07,920
gonna select what what's going to thrive best and what won't.

394
00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:11,119
But again, the ecosystem on the East Coast is so wrecked,

395
00:23:11,119 --> 00:23:14,920
it's like, you know, what will be the selection pressures.

396
00:23:14,920 --> 00:23:16,599
They're not going to be the same ones that they

397
00:23:16,599 --> 00:23:18,000
were seven hundred years ago.

398
00:23:19,759 --> 00:23:22,920
Speaker 2: Right, There's definitely gonna be some strong selection going on

399
00:23:24,079 --> 00:23:26,880
in order to get trees that are fit for the environment.

400
00:23:28,559 --> 00:23:31,440
Speaker 1: Okay, so where so when? So tell me let's get

401
00:23:31,440 --> 00:23:36,039
into the melodrama. So what happened? This was discovered you guys,

402
00:23:36,480 --> 00:23:40,359
you know, honed up to it, brought it up, you know, Oops,

403
00:23:40,359 --> 00:23:42,480
we made a mistake, and then what was the blowback?

404
00:23:42,519 --> 00:23:43,039
What happened?

405
00:23:45,319 --> 00:23:49,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, So as soon as we found out this labeling error,

406
00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:54,079
we went and told and we notified the regulatory agencies

407
00:23:54,160 --> 00:23:58,319
right away and let them know that we intended to

408
00:23:58,359 --> 00:24:03,279
correct our paperwork and uh and get that sorted out

409
00:24:03,599 --> 00:24:08,720
prior to deregulation. And there really weren't any issues with

410
00:24:08,839 --> 00:24:12,599
the regulatory agencies. Uh, and we have now submitted that

411
00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:20,039
paperwork revising our original petition. But there were some groups

412
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:26,240
who decided to use this as a way to attack us,

413
00:24:26,359 --> 00:24:30,839
this labeling issue. And yeah, so there are a few

414
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:37,599
publications published some negative stories about our stuff that didn't

415
00:24:37,599 --> 00:24:41,759
show us in the best light. But there's always people

416
00:24:41,799 --> 00:24:44,920
looking to jump on you like that when you're working

417
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:47,839
with this genetically modified technology.

418
00:24:47,720 --> 00:24:51,640
Speaker 1: Right right? That man? So what and regarding that, I mean,

419
00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:54,319
what were what was some of the press that was generated,

420
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:56,799
because again, the way that I read it was not

421
00:24:56,960 --> 00:24:59,079
it didn't sound like, oh we just you know, both

422
00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:03,160
we make step two things that were both resistant to

423
00:25:03,759 --> 00:25:08,000
chestnut blight. Just a simple error. They made it sound

424
00:25:08,039 --> 00:25:10,759
like the whole project was doomed and had to be abandoned.

425
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:16,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's definitely what was being said for a

426
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:22,359
while there, especially, you know, you'd see these activists organizations

427
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:26,000
going out and people from that organization giving interviews to

428
00:25:26,079 --> 00:25:30,319
lots of different publications looking to to write about this.

429
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:30,640
Speaker 1: And.

430
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:36,200
Speaker 2: You know, there's there's always this these misunderstandings and fear

431
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:41,359
about the technology, and when something complex like this happens

432
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:47,839
in error, people don't really understand what that actually means,

433
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:50,640
and so it could it was easily spun into something

434
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:53,079
that it wasn't that this was like a complete failure

435
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:56,799
and we had to start all over when really it

436
00:25:56,880 --> 00:25:59,720
was just an issue of a name change.

437
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:04,200
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah, Yeah, we got the the tags got swapped,

438
00:26:04,759 --> 00:26:07,400
but both are still resistant. What was do you think

439
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:10,279
it was like anti GMO blowback or do you think

440
00:26:10,319 --> 00:26:13,400
it was just other organizations that were working on similar

441
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:17,519
things with chestnuts? Like what? What? What did what could

442
00:26:17,559 --> 00:26:19,319
you tell? I mean, where where who were all the

443
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,559
who were all the negative Nazis? Not who? But but

444
00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:23,480
what were they saying?

445
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:30,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's other people that work with chestnuts that don't

446
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:36,400
haven't historically used the molecular breeding tools that we used,

447
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:40,400
that kind of use that as a way of saying

448
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:45,319
that their way was still the better way and that

449
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:49,119
we you know, yeah.

450
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:52,799
Speaker 1: That seems ridiculous. That seems you're never I mean, it's

451
00:26:52,839 --> 00:26:54,720
going to take forever and you're not going to get

452
00:26:54,799 --> 00:26:58,440
pure American chestnuts by just back cross breeding. But what

453
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:01,039
was their anti gm O blow too? Though? I mean,

454
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:01,960
was it some of that?

455
00:27:03,759 --> 00:27:08,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of the there were publications like the Washington

456
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:13,480
Posts actually had an article and you saw members of

457
00:27:13,519 --> 00:27:18,599
the anti GMO organization giving interviews to those people.

458
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:24,160
Speaker 1: And oh God Jesus Christ, Yeah, that's always a bummer.

459
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:27,240
I'd love to get my science from from those people.

460
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:31,119
So what's the what is the what's the future of

461
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:31,720
this project?

462
00:27:31,799 --> 00:27:38,440
Speaker 2: Then we're continuing on. UH, We're gonna do what we've

463
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:42,559
been doing, which is use this technology and uh improve

464
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:45,960
the American chestnut. This darling tree was never supposed to

465
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:49,200
be a silver bullet. We never claimed it was. We're

466
00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:53,160
still working on new lines that use this same gene,

467
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:58,480
this oxygene, using new promoters and also in new cell

468
00:27:58,519 --> 00:28:01,759
lines like we discussed before. And we're working on developing

469
00:28:01,799 --> 00:28:05,680
new genes to genes other than oxo to combine with

470
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:09,759
OXO potentially and UH to create more and more resistant trees.

471
00:28:09,799 --> 00:28:14,680
We're continuously developing biotechnology and American chestnuts so we can

472
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:18,319
have resistance a chestnut blatant. We're also looking at other

473
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:23,920
diseases too, like phytothra root rot is a major disease American.

474
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:26,200
We're looking at genes for that as well.

475
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:30,559
Speaker 1: The Phytophtha that which is a relative of brown algae

476
00:28:30,559 --> 00:28:33,039
that became parasitic. It's not actually a fungus. Where did

477
00:28:33,079 --> 00:28:37,799
that that species that is problematic for American chestnuts in

478
00:28:37,799 --> 00:28:39,880
the East Coast? Where did that come from? Do you know?

479
00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:41,960
And what species? Is it? A phytostera?

480
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:47,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Phytothra cinemoni.

481
00:28:46,559 --> 00:28:49,759
Speaker 1: Was fucking everywhere. Man, that's in Australia, fucking up boll

482
00:28:49,799 --> 00:28:53,680
of my pines too, And and yeah, anyway, sorry, go ahead,

483
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:54,240
where to come from?

484
00:28:54,279 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 2: I believe it's one of the worst global plant pathogens.

485
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:01,960
It can infect like thousands of different plant species, so

486
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:06,200
it's like a really major pathogen. And I think they

487
00:29:06,279 --> 00:29:10,240
believe it was originally brought over on cinnamon trees and

488
00:29:10,279 --> 00:29:13,799
that's where it got its species name from the cinemomi.

489
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:17,960
And it actually predates chestnut blade introduction. They were having

490
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:21,720
phytaluther issues prior to chestnut blade.

491
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:26,319
Speaker 1: But unlike chestnut blighte, it doesn't knock out every tree right.

492
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 2: It's actually a lot of people consider it worse than

493
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:33,640
chestnut blake because it attacks the roots and so it

494
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:36,359
will kill the whole root system and then the tree

495
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:38,759
can't re sprout like it does when it gets chestnut.

496
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 1: But does it I mean, is it because chestnut blight

497
00:29:41,799 --> 00:29:44,519
is nearly one hundred percent fatal, right, I mean there

498
00:29:44,559 --> 00:29:48,720
are no American chestnuts that seem resistant to it. Is

499
00:29:48,759 --> 00:29:51,640
that true? Or are there supposedly a couple outliers or what?

500
00:29:52,799 --> 00:29:56,559
Speaker 2: There isn't any validated resistance to chestnut blight, but I

501
00:29:56,599 --> 00:30:00,920
don't think there's anything resistant to fightoth it either. The

502
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:03,480
thing with phytopha, though, is that it's only in the south,

503
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:06,039
on the south end of the range. It hasn't come

504
00:30:06,559 --> 00:30:10,759
north north. Yeah, it's not north of like Pennsylvania. So

505
00:30:12,279 --> 00:30:14,240
it's mainly an issue in the south right now, but

506
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:18,160
as temperatures continue to increase, there's a pretty good chance

507
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:19,640
it will make its way up here as well.

508
00:30:20,839 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: Jesus. Okay, so this this idea, how did you guys

509
00:30:25,279 --> 00:30:29,240
catch this this mistake between them, this miss labeling? How

510
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:32,160
do you guys catch this screw up between fifty Darling

511
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:34,160
fifty eight and Darling fifty four.

512
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, like we were talking about before with this

513
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:42,880
inheritance of the single gene, that's because we have when

514
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:45,519
you start with the original transformant, there's just the one

515
00:30:45,599 --> 00:30:48,440
gene on one chromosome. But what you can do is

516
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:52,359
actually cross two trees together that both have the gene,

517
00:30:52,799 --> 00:30:55,079
and then you can end up with offspring that have

518
00:30:55,160 --> 00:30:57,759
a copy of the gene on both chromosomes, so they

519
00:30:57,759 --> 00:31:03,680
would be considered homozygous. And so we were doing a

520
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:06,759
breeding program for that, and we were screening the offspring

521
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:11,480
for the inheritance of both of those genes.

522
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:14,519
Speaker 1: ALM not heterozygous YEP.

523
00:31:15,079 --> 00:31:19,079
Speaker 2: And so we were trying to do PCRs on the

524
00:31:19,160 --> 00:31:23,599
region of the chromosome where Darling fifty eight's ox insertion

525
00:31:24,279 --> 00:31:30,839
is and we were having unsuccessful PCRs, and eventually through

526
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:35,519
like sequencing, we figured out that it wasn't actually Darling

527
00:31:35,519 --> 00:31:37,319
fifty eight, but it was Darling fifty four.

528
00:31:37,559 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 1: When you say unsuccessful PCRs, tell everybody what was going on.

529
00:31:42,519 --> 00:31:45,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when you do a PCR, you design little

530
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:51,039
pieces of DNA to bind to certain places in the

531
00:31:51,119 --> 00:31:54,799
genome to amplify and make lots of copies of DNA.

532
00:31:55,319 --> 00:31:58,160
And so we were trying to do a PCR of

533
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:02,359
this place in the genome that didn't exist because it

534
00:32:02,400 --> 00:32:04,240
wasn't Darling fifty eight, so it was.

535
00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:07,279
Speaker 1: It was located the oxogene was located in a different

536
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:10,119
part of the genome. So you were basically putting it

537
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:13,440
was was it primers? Yes, you were using so the

538
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:16,319
primers were not matching because they were primers made for

539
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:18,240
Darling fifty eight not Darling fifty four.

540
00:32:19,079 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly, And so.

541
00:32:21,039 --> 00:32:24,079
Speaker 1: That was what made you guys then realize, Okay, we

542
00:32:24,079 --> 00:32:26,359
got Look, but Darling fifty eight and Darling fifty four,

543
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:29,000
I mean, what are and I think I maybe already

544
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:30,759
asked you this, but what are some of the differences

545
00:32:30,799 --> 00:32:36,079
between these two different phenotypes that both have the oxogene?

546
00:32:37,119 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 2: They're completely indistinguishable. I mean, when if you look at

547
00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:42,799
them next to each other, they look exactly the same.

548
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 1: Is there is there any difference in Bleich resistance?

549
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:50,799
Speaker 2: No, they're functionally equivalent. And also gene expression is almost

550
00:32:50,839 --> 00:32:54,039
exactly the same to the level of that oxoexpression.

551
00:32:54,839 --> 00:32:58,160
Speaker 1: Jesus. So this really, it really isn't that big of

552
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:00,279
a deal. It sounds like, I mean, it is for

553
00:33:00,359 --> 00:33:04,359
a fucking study, that's a huge fuck up. But in

554
00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:07,359
the long game, in terms of restoring an ecosystem, these

555
00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:11,119
are both would you guys, would Darling fifty four ever

556
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:13,720
be released or was that just kind of a backup

557
00:33:13,799 --> 00:33:16,680
that is not planning to be released in the first place.

558
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:20,559
Speaker 2: I mean it could have potentially been released, but we

559
00:33:20,559 --> 00:33:23,720
were focusing more on Darling fifty eight because you kind

560
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:26,400
of need to just like choot, we have limited operations

561
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:30,519
so to like split the breeding between two different lines,

562
00:33:31,039 --> 00:33:34,759
which is result in like fewer numbers of one or

563
00:33:34,839 --> 00:33:37,079
the other. So we were just focusing on fifty eight

564
00:33:37,319 --> 00:33:40,839
or what we thought was fifty eight for all those years.

565
00:33:41,039 --> 00:33:45,519
But yeah, the yeah, I'm sorry train of thought.

566
00:33:45,839 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: That's okay, Well this is a casual conversation anyway, don't

567
00:33:48,759 --> 00:33:49,279
worry about it.

568
00:33:49,319 --> 00:33:52,680
Speaker 2: But I'm sorry, I just remembered. So it wasn't as

569
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:56,720
if we weren't testing the offspring with PCRs and stuff

570
00:33:56,759 --> 00:34:00,079
the whole time. The problem was eight years ago and

571
00:34:00,319 --> 00:34:03,519
have that annotated genome like we have now, like we

572
00:34:03,519 --> 00:34:06,519
were talking about, that is something that came years after

573
00:34:07,119 --> 00:34:11,599
this labeling mistake happened, So we didn't actually have the

574
00:34:11,639 --> 00:34:16,920
resources to identify in the genome where these inserts were.

575
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:19,599
So that was part of the issue early on, is

576
00:34:19,599 --> 00:34:22,880
that we didn't have the fully annotated genome at that point.

577
00:34:24,599 --> 00:34:27,199
Speaker 1: So that and that's why this was that's why this

578
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:32,679
wasn't caught before. Right, Well, I mean I still so

579
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:35,400
what do you think is there a point in time

580
00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:41,400
at which this you know, OXO containing phenotypes of American

581
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:45,000
chestnut trees, of pure American chestnut trees, not hybridized ones

582
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:49,280
where parts of the Chinese chestnut are just shotgun throughout

583
00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:51,480
the genome. Is there a point in time at which

584
00:34:51,519 --> 00:34:55,840
American chestnuts with blight resistance might be available to the public.

585
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:01,519
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what we're working towards right now now. Because

586
00:35:01,559 --> 00:35:07,800
they're genetically engineered, they're highly regulated by the US Biotechnology

587
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:13,440
Regulatory Service, so that's the USDA, the EPA, and the FDA,

588
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:18,559
and so we have to go through a regulatory process

589
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:23,719
basically demonstrating that the trees are safe, and then once

590
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:28,280
they're given approval, then we can begin distributing distributing them

591
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:28,880
to the public.

592
00:35:29,559 --> 00:35:32,519
Speaker 1: The companies that like when Monsanto does the round up

593
00:35:32,599 --> 00:35:35,480
ready crops and all the shit that they put I mean,

594
00:35:35,519 --> 00:35:37,679
they have to do the same thing, right or do they?

595
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:40,360
They probably lobby. They're a huge organization, so they probably

596
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:44,320
lobby to get you know, las you know, to have

597
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:47,320
some of this stuff more lax with them, to get

598
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:50,360
some of these regulations lacks, or to speed things up.

599
00:35:51,320 --> 00:35:55,519
Speaker 2: Well, actually they benefit from having really strong regulations because

600
00:35:55,559 --> 00:35:58,079
they can afford to go through that process. They can

601
00:35:58,239 --> 00:36:03,239
hire lawyers and of scientists to generate data to go

602
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:07,960
through this process, whereas smaller guys, say small university labs

603
00:36:08,079 --> 00:36:11,840
or something, don't have the resources to fund all the

604
00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:16,480
studies and the lawyers to put their products through this

605
00:36:16,559 --> 00:36:21,400
regulatory process. So people like Monsanto actually benefit from having

606
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:24,239
really strong regulation, whereas the little guys are the ones

607
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:27,239
that are pushed out of the market because I can't

608
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:28,119
afford to do it.

609
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:30,119
Speaker 1: I don't see it. How do they benefit though.

610
00:36:31,159 --> 00:36:35,159
Speaker 2: Because it reduces their competition because there are so that

611
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:37,920
they can They can actually afford to go through that

612
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:40,599
regulatory process, but they're the only ones who can. So

613
00:36:40,639 --> 00:36:41,679
there's little.

614
00:36:41,639 --> 00:36:43,880
Speaker 1: Yeah hoops that they can jump through, but no one

615
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:47,079
else can, right, So that's why they get a monopoly.

616
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:49,840
The fucking round up readything is so insane, like the

617
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:54,119
fact that they spray round up on crops, that's fucking insane,

618
00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:58,840
just even if you're feeding it the livestock. That's just nuts,

619
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:01,480
you know, And then it's bad for people like me

620
00:37:01,679 --> 00:37:03,639
to want to you know, roundup gets all the bad

621
00:37:03,679 --> 00:37:06,320
press because it's you know, given everybody cancer because they're

622
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:07,920
eating it, versus I just want to use it to

623
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:10,000
get rid of some fucking bermuda grass in my yard

624
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:12,880
and I can't. Now I'm getting Now I'm getting mean

625
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:17,280
comments from these permaculture wackos. No offense to the ideology

626
00:37:17,280 --> 00:37:21,719
of permaculture. It's just the association that I've noticed you

627
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:23,920
just you tend to meet, you get like a fifty

628
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:27,039
to fifty Tell me someone who's in the permaculture, it's

629
00:37:27,039 --> 00:37:29,400
a fifty to fifty chance I might not be able

630
00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:31,239
to tolerate being around them for more than ten minutes.

631
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:38,440
That okay, But anyway, sorry, So the the regulations, I mean,

632
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:41,000
let's say I'm a corporates lease right, and I've got

633
00:37:41,039 --> 00:37:45,360
some sort of I've got some sort of ulterior motive

634
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:47,000
with this. I want to make money off of it.

635
00:37:47,079 --> 00:37:50,559
I'm approaching you guys saying, hey, I've got this great idea.

636
00:37:50,639 --> 00:37:54,199
We can you know a way that we can generate

637
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:57,199
so much revenue and corner of the market using this

638
00:37:57,320 --> 00:38:01,440
technology you guys invented. Is what the chances of that happening?

639
00:38:01,599 --> 00:38:05,320
Am I going to be successful or are you guys?

640
00:38:05,559 --> 00:38:09,159
Is there is there good intention, good solid work that's

641
00:38:09,199 --> 00:38:12,639
going to prevent the corruption of this work. You guys

642
00:38:12,639 --> 00:38:13,079
have done.

643
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:18,599
Speaker 2: Well with the distribution of these trees. We want it

644
00:38:18,639 --> 00:38:21,920
to be as open as possible so that anyone who

645
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:25,599
wants to grow these trees are able to. So the

646
00:38:25,639 --> 00:38:27,960
way you do that is with things like non exclusive

647
00:38:28,039 --> 00:38:33,679
licenses without patents, and so it's easier for people to

648
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:36,679
grow these trees and move them around and basically do

649
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:40,559
whatever they want with them, versus having, you know, a patented,

650
00:38:41,079 --> 00:38:47,320
non propagatable piece of you know, plant material that that

651
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:49,599
only gets in the way of restoration.

652
00:38:49,639 --> 00:38:51,519
Speaker 1: So this will be non patented. Have you guys been

653
00:38:51,559 --> 00:38:56,159
approached by any money hungry villains out there. I'm not

654
00:38:56,199 --> 00:38:58,239
asking you to name names. I'm just wondering if any

655
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:03,079
dirt bag, you know, corporate the you know what I mean,

656
00:39:03,199 --> 00:39:07,320
corporate interests have approached you and tried to, you know,

657
00:39:07,639 --> 00:39:09,639
tempt you. Has that happened.

658
00:39:10,639 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 2: I don't think so. But I mean, even if that

659
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:16,440
were to happen, I mean, it seems like it would

660
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:20,079
be something better than what they're already doing. Right If

661
00:39:20,079 --> 00:39:22,920
a corporation wants to get behind something to restore the

662
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:25,639
American trusts, not that that probably wouldn't be the worst

663
00:39:25,679 --> 00:39:26,280
thing in the world.

664
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:29,159
Speaker 1: Well, it's not with the intention of putting money behind.

665
00:39:29,199 --> 00:39:31,960
It's just there's a cost. And then when you privatize something,

666
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:38,159
you always seem to lose efficacy for the sake of

667
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:41,719
because the main motive is not it's no longer being

668
00:39:42,119 --> 00:39:49,079
you know, being you know, the purpose now becomes making

669
00:39:49,119 --> 00:39:51,960
money as opposed to actually achieving the goal in the

670
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:54,119
first place, you know, and if you are achieving the goal,

671
00:39:54,159 --> 00:39:56,440
it's only as a stepping stone to make more money

672
00:39:56,760 --> 00:40:00,280
and please shareholders, et cetera. Which is kind of like

673
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:04,360
why it's so ridiculous when people talk about, you know, well,

674
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:06,519
private sector it's the post to the government. Well, yeah,

675
00:40:06,519 --> 00:40:09,800
the government can be tainted and fucked up and inefficient too.

676
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:13,360
The private sector almost certainly is looking like the power company.

677
00:40:13,400 --> 00:40:17,559
Like you know, in Texas, there's like ten different sleezebag

678
00:40:17,639 --> 00:40:20,440
companies that are all going to equally rob you, well

679
00:40:20,559 --> 00:40:23,000
not equally. Some definitely shake you down more than others,

680
00:40:23,679 --> 00:40:25,920
you know, for the purges of electricity versus if it's

681
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:28,280
like a public utility. Yeah, there might be problems, but

682
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:31,920
privatizing is sometimes the worst thing you can you know,

683
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:36,000
it's all this this nineteen eighties Reaganomics garbage. But I

684
00:40:36,079 --> 00:40:41,280
was just curious because it seems like that would be Okay,

685
00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:44,320
pardon it. We hit a technical difficulty. I'll put a

686
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:46,599
commercial break in there. Got the fucking commercials on this

687
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:50,039
podcast have gotten horrible. It used to do this auto

688
00:40:50,119 --> 00:40:53,280
select thing to put the commercials in, and they would

689
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:56,079
put like nine commercial breaks, and then now I just

690
00:40:56,159 --> 00:40:58,079
fucking go in there. Have to put them in myself,

691
00:40:58,119 --> 00:41:02,239
because it's you know, you'll be listening to a podcast

692
00:41:02,280 --> 00:41:04,960
on American chestnuts and all of a sudden you get

693
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:08,480
this just crass, horrific. Hey wait, come come out to

694
00:41:08,599 --> 00:41:13,199
Jumbu Casino. Just fills me with fucking hate. Anybody talks

695
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:16,440
to me like that, I just Jesus Christ. Anyway, Okay,

696
00:41:18,119 --> 00:41:20,000
so we were we were just talking about you know,

697
00:41:20,119 --> 00:41:25,239
possible corruption of of uh you know, uh market opportunities

698
00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:27,800
for for marketing industry. But but again, there's going to

699
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:31,920
be non patented. This is just open source basically, it's

700
00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:33,760
like a like an open source software.

701
00:41:35,679 --> 00:41:38,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, essentially, Yeah, because we wanted a few barriers in

702
00:41:38,719 --> 00:41:42,199
the way of restoration as possible, and if rustoration is

703
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:44,159
our goal, it's definitely not to make a bunch of

704
00:41:44,199 --> 00:41:47,880
money to be able to get these threatened trees back

705
00:41:47,960 --> 00:41:48,760
on the forests.

706
00:41:49,519 --> 00:41:51,440
Speaker 1: And so how did you guys get funding for this?

707
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:56,280
Speaker 2: By the way, I guess there's a variety of different sources.

708
00:41:56,320 --> 00:41:58,800
Some came from the State of New York.

709
00:41:59,159 --> 00:41:59,239
Speaker 1: Uh.

710
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:04,039
Speaker 2: Some from the New York chapter of the American Chess Foundation,

711
00:42:04,159 --> 00:42:08,519
which is basically our biggest partner, a biggest supporter. For

712
00:42:08,559 --> 00:42:12,800
a few years, we were funded by the Templeton World

713
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:16,360
Charity Foundation. They actually funded us for three years, which

714
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:21,119
was a huge help, really allowed us to grow and

715
00:42:22,159 --> 00:42:26,920
advanced as a project. And recently we actually partnered with

716
00:42:28,079 --> 00:42:34,599
this company called American Castania, which is a small B

717
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:39,039
corporation which is a public interest corporation startup. It's just

718
00:42:39,079 --> 00:42:41,920
like a few guys and they're starting to plant some

719
00:42:42,039 --> 00:42:46,599
orchards with our trees for future distribution.

720
00:42:48,159 --> 00:42:51,400
Speaker 1: God, that seems so great, man. I don't know, I

721
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:53,760
would love to see it. I'd love to see it,

722
00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:57,679
you know. Comit wasn't there some project on abandoned coal

723
00:42:57,719 --> 00:43:01,559
mining sites like pit mines that got filled in in

724
00:43:01,599 --> 00:43:03,559
Appalachia where they were going to restore them. They were

725
00:43:03,599 --> 00:43:06,480
going to because to plant these things you would need

726
00:43:07,159 --> 00:43:09,480
you know, they need sun. They're not they're kind of

727
00:43:09,559 --> 00:43:12,760
shade intolerant. I guess maybe when not when they're young,

728
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:16,519
but certainly when they get older, so you'd need open canopies.

729
00:43:16,679 --> 00:43:20,440
Was there, and you know, abandoned coal mining operations are

730
00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:22,400
a great spot to do it. Was there something about

731
00:43:22,559 --> 00:43:23,679
that going on from what you know?

732
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:28,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember there was ideas to plant on coal

733
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:32,480
reclamation sites. That was one of the ideas. There's other

734
00:43:33,239 --> 00:43:38,920
programs I've been discussed, such as converting foul farmland and

735
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:41,639
stuff like that. There's quite a bit of that on

736
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:46,760
the East Coast that was formerly forests that was converted

737
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:49,679
into agriculture, you know, like one hundred and two hundred

738
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:53,239
years ago and has kind of just been abandoned and

739
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:57,159
is now not really productive land. Those would be good

740
00:43:57,199 --> 00:43:59,199
places to plant them as well.

741
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:01,960
Speaker 1: You're going to have some competition from shipbag developers though,

742
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:04,360
because they want to put you know, ugly tracked housing

743
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:07,880
and you know, big box stores in those all at

744
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:10,639
abandoned farmland. That's the big thing that the United States

745
00:44:10,679 --> 00:44:16,440
is doing these days is that you see what is

746
00:44:16,519 --> 00:44:18,840
what's the cul de sac neighborhood Seene like around seat.

747
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:20,599
What are the suburbs of Syracuse like.

748
00:44:23,079 --> 00:44:26,440
Speaker 2: Pretty typical, I guess, I mean equally just.

749
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,719
Speaker 1: Good old standard American bleak like you know.

750
00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:32,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's lots of trees though, So that's nice.

751
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:34,840
Speaker 1: That is cool. That is cool, Yeah, because we don't

752
00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:38,760
you know, it's it's a lot of lawns in Texas,

753
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:40,719
like in the I thirty five corridor. Those are some

754
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:43,719
of the bleakst fucking suburbs I've seen not a lot

755
00:44:43,719 --> 00:44:44,199
of trees.

756
00:44:45,159 --> 00:44:49,079
Speaker 2: So we get lots of uh forestation around here from

757
00:44:49,159 --> 00:44:50,159
all the rain that we got.

758
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:52,320
Speaker 1: Did you have you guys sourced when you were looking

759
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:55,360
for phenotypes of of Castania and tile, were you guys

760
00:44:55,360 --> 00:44:57,599
sourcing any trees from out west? Because there's a number

761
00:44:57,639 --> 00:45:01,599
of of trees that got planted, you know, in western

762
00:45:01,639 --> 00:45:05,119
North America where the blight is not as good at surviving,

763
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:08,360
probably due to the aridity. Were you guys sourcing any

764
00:45:08,559 --> 00:45:11,960
phenotypes from out there they got planted before the blight

765
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:15,079
you know, took hold in nineteen ten or whenever it was.

766
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:17,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we did actually get a couple from

767
00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:21,360
out there. There is this one now the names it's

768
00:45:21,400 --> 00:45:25,000
like a light cemetery or something like that. There's a tree.

769
00:45:25,119 --> 00:45:27,679
I think it's either Oregon or Washington.

770
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 1: Washington, Tumbwater, Washington. Yeah, there's two beasts there.

771
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:34,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think we got a clone from that,

772
00:45:35,639 --> 00:45:38,800
and that's part of our orchard. We have thousands of

773
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:43,119
different genotypes from all across the range. We have southern trees,

774
00:45:43,639 --> 00:45:46,400
we have northern trees, stuff in the middle. You know,

775
00:45:47,199 --> 00:45:49,320
we tried as much diversity as possible.

776
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: There was a I remember seeing a massive fucking American

777
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:54,440
chestnut that I guess was planted in the late eighteen

778
00:45:54,519 --> 00:45:58,880
hundreds and the Klamath River in Hamburg, California, and I

779
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:00,880
talked to the lady who lived there, so this kind

780
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:03,719
of the fucking shack looks like it belongs to Appalachia.

781
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:06,360
It's like this old house, and she's you know, I

782
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:07,719
went and talked to him, like, is that a fuck

783
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:09,679
that looks like an American chestnut. She's like, yeah, it

784
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:13,079
was planted by a miner in eighteen fifty two that

785
00:46:13,199 --> 00:46:14,800
came out here from West Virginia. And I was like,

786
00:46:14,800 --> 00:46:17,440
that's a fucking one hundred and sixty year old American

787
00:46:17,519 --> 00:46:20,199
chest not holy shit, But it was only one, so

788
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:23,639
there wasn't the you know, no good seed, but they

789
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:27,679
fuck it was a beautiful I got a photo of it. Yeah,

790
00:46:27,679 --> 00:46:30,320
I was in Hamburg looking for Baker cypress trees. There's

791
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,960
a cool grove that I guess burned wonderful fucking Hespero

792
00:46:34,039 --> 00:46:35,719
ciprus species.

793
00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:38,559
Speaker 2: I'd love to get out there. I know there's this

794
00:46:38,599 --> 00:46:42,800
one farm that's near LA called Skyline Chestnuts, and they've

795
00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:47,119
got quite a few American chestnuts and American chestnut hybrids

796
00:46:47,119 --> 00:46:49,760
that are like fully mature and producing notes. I'd love

797
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:50,760
to see those in person.

798
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:54,599
Speaker 1: What's the biggest American chestnut that you've seen or that

799
00:46:54,639 --> 00:46:56,119
you know of on the East Coast.

800
00:46:57,639 --> 00:46:59,800
Speaker 2: Well, the one that I know of is the biggest

801
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:02,800
is in Maine. It's like one hundred and fifteen feet tall.

802
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:04,679
Speaker 1: I think Jesus, and it didn't How did it not

803
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:05,199
get black?

804
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:11,519
Speaker 2: It must have grown really fast and hassmissed it so far.

805
00:47:11,559 --> 00:47:13,920
But if I recall correctly, I think I heard that

806
00:47:14,039 --> 00:47:18,360
people have found some lesions on it, so it might

807
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:23,039
not be there too much longer. But I myself, I've

808
00:47:23,159 --> 00:47:29,119
found a few large surviving American chestnuts in the Syracuse area.

809
00:47:29,159 --> 00:47:31,159
I actually found one that was probably around eighty or

810
00:47:31,239 --> 00:47:34,119
ninety feet tall, and I actually took cuttings from that

811
00:47:34,159 --> 00:47:37,559
and grafted it into our orchard, and you've done crosses

812
00:47:37,559 --> 00:47:37,880
with it.

813
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 1: When you're grafting, you have to make sure that that

814
00:47:42,079 --> 00:47:44,960
ring of vascular cambia meets up perfectly or what.

815
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:49,719
Speaker 2: In theory. Yeah, I understand that's how it works, but

816
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:54,840
I'm I just do cleft grafts. If you're familiar with that,

817
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:58,719
it's basically the simplest form of grafting, and that seems

818
00:47:58,760 --> 00:48:02,639
to work pretty well. I've gotten a few successful grass

819
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:03,559
using that type.

820
00:48:03,880 --> 00:48:06,639
Speaker 1: I've only ever grafted cacti before, and it's easier because

821
00:48:06,639 --> 00:48:09,880
they've got cat I have cortical bundles, unlike I think

822
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:12,400
every other family of plants made. There's probably a couple

823
00:48:12,440 --> 00:48:14,800
other families that have cortical bundles, but they've got vascular

824
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:16,400
tissue in the cortex basically.

825
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:19,000
Speaker 2: So I think that's one of the great ways of

826
00:48:19,039 --> 00:48:23,119
preserving genetic diversity, because there's still like millions of trees

827
00:48:23,199 --> 00:48:25,760
out there that are just like these little stump sprouts

828
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:29,559
that are stuck under the canopy and so they can't flower.

829
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:32,239
If you locate those you can go and take cuttings

830
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:35,599
from lows and graft them into orchards that get good sun,

831
00:48:36,039 --> 00:48:39,000
and then you can do crosses with those with those

832
00:48:39,039 --> 00:48:42,960
trees that otherwise would never be able to make nuts.

833
00:48:43,079 --> 00:48:45,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're preserving genetic diversity. But still if that

834
00:48:45,719 --> 00:48:49,400
stem I mean, you can graft an American onto a Chinese,

835
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:51,719
I presume, but the American will still get blight, at

836
00:48:51,760 --> 00:48:52,719
least that branch will.

837
00:48:53,480 --> 00:48:56,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's correct. So what you're doing is you're capturing

838
00:48:56,320 --> 00:48:58,440
its genetics in the offspring.

839
00:48:58,599 --> 00:49:03,320
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, but still the Yeah, the American tree,

840
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:06,719
the American, that American branch will still get blight, but

841
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:08,840
but the whole tree that it's a part of will

842
00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:12,800
be fine. But still, I mean a branch, there's a

843
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:15,519
lot less service area for blight the colonies compared to

844
00:49:15,559 --> 00:49:17,079
a whole giant tree trunk.

845
00:49:18,039 --> 00:49:20,400
Speaker 2: So yeah, and most of them it is sorry.

846
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:25,639
Speaker 1: Blight germinates, I mean, the spores germinate on the kind

847
00:49:25,679 --> 00:49:28,880
of like the opening for them where they get in

848
00:49:29,119 --> 00:49:32,920
is where the bark is splitting as the tree grows.

849
00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:37,280
Speaker 2: Right, yep, that's right. And so you see kinkers form

850
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:38,760
on the graft unions pretty often.

851
00:49:39,800 --> 00:49:43,559
Speaker 1: Yeah, so right on the graft Yeah, okay.

852
00:49:44,000 --> 00:49:46,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've done quite a bit of grafting over the years,

853
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:48,559
and a lot of it takes and grows for a

854
00:49:48,599 --> 00:49:50,960
couple of years, and then usually within like three or

855
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:55,920
four years, it dies from the blight. We have some

856
00:49:55,960 --> 00:49:59,360
transgenic trees that I use as root sock, and I've

857
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:03,800
been able to to keep more alive longer using those

858
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:07,960
as the roots suck than just using non transgenic trees,

859
00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:10,519
and I've had the best success with that, and some

860
00:50:10,599 --> 00:50:13,880
of our biggest trees are actually from grass.

861
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:17,559
Speaker 1: So what happens to the transgenic trees when they get blight?

862
00:50:19,880 --> 00:50:24,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, they get these gnarly looking cankers on them. They

863
00:50:25,519 --> 00:50:28,639
it kind of you could describe it as like a blocky,

864
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:34,480
quirky kind of texture, and it gets swollen versus like

865
00:50:34,519 --> 00:50:38,000
a normal wild type canker. They actually look like they're

866
00:50:38,039 --> 00:50:43,559
sinking in. And what the oxod does is it slows

867
00:50:43,599 --> 00:50:47,119
the blight down enough that the trees' natural defenses can

868
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:52,239
kick in and compartmentalize up blight infection so the tree

869
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:53,079
can keep growing.

870
00:50:53,440 --> 00:50:55,800
Speaker 1: So they still get infected and they'll get a canker,

871
00:50:55,800 --> 00:50:58,960
but the canker swells up instead of sinking in and

872
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:01,960
then what happened you know, a year down the line,

873
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:04,719
when the tree has sealed it off and recovered it.

874
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:11,599
Speaker 2: Uh, it just continues to grow and it just a scar.

875
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:14,800
It does have a scar, yeah, it does. It gets

876
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:17,599
a bit of a gnarly texture to it. Have you

877
00:51:17,599 --> 00:51:21,119
ever heard of the phenomenon of kruddy bark before?

878
00:51:21,639 --> 00:51:23,039
Speaker 1: No cruddy bark?

879
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:26,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's kind of this thing that was discovered

880
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:32,239
in American chestnuts where these kinkers get this like really

881
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:37,519
bizarre texture and uh, and but the trees are able

882
00:51:37,559 --> 00:51:40,360
to survive, and they think it's some kind of infection

883
00:51:40,559 --> 00:51:43,199
going on of the fungus. The fungus is getting infected

884
00:51:43,199 --> 00:51:46,679
either with another fungus or maybe a virus, and it

885
00:51:46,719 --> 00:51:49,199
seems to spread. But the tree it gets like this

886
00:51:49,400 --> 00:51:52,719
really nasty looking bark on the tree that's kind of

887
00:51:52,719 --> 00:51:57,360
like a qirky, blocky texture. But the tree is able

888
00:51:57,360 --> 00:52:01,840
to grow. And that's on non trans trees where that occurs,

889
00:52:02,079 --> 00:52:05,400
But on these tracks genic trees it looks really similar

890
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:08,840
to that. It gets this like kind of this coirky,

891
00:52:08,880 --> 00:52:13,559
gnarly texture where the canker is and that allows the

892
00:52:13,599 --> 00:52:15,159
tree to survive.

893
00:52:15,159 --> 00:52:17,880
Speaker 1: And so in Chinese chestnuts, I mean, is it known

894
00:52:17,960 --> 00:52:21,599
how the Chinese chestnuts resist the black because my how

895
00:52:21,679 --> 00:52:26,559
I presume this how chryphenectria got so pathogenic and so

896
00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:29,480
deadly was a series of baby steps. You know, ten

897
00:52:29,480 --> 00:52:32,760
million years ago the ancestor of chryphenectria or whatever lineage

898
00:52:33,440 --> 00:52:35,760
you know, if you go far ten million years back

899
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:39,840
in that lineage, whenever this thing evolved or first interacted

900
00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:43,880
with the genus castania, you know, it probably wasn't that bad.

901
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:45,960
But then then the genus I assume it's like an

902
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:49,400
evolutionary arms race in other words, like the Chinese chestnuts

903
00:52:49,760 --> 00:52:52,679
get some resistance, all the ones that don't have it

904
00:52:52,760 --> 00:52:55,000
get culled out by the fungus. Now the fungus has

905
00:52:55,079 --> 00:52:57,960
to up its you know, enzymes to break down more

906
00:52:58,039 --> 00:53:01,440
chestnut tissue and get around this compartmentalization whatever. Now that

907
00:53:01,559 --> 00:53:03,360
then the Chinese. Now it's the Chinese, you know, just

908
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:06,880
like the zigzag back and forth ping pong of you know,

909
00:53:07,039 --> 00:53:12,000
upping defenses versus upping pathogenicity. How does the Chinese chestnut

910
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:15,039
resist resist chryphenectria?

911
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:19,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, And you described me pretty pretty well.

912
00:53:19,960 --> 00:53:23,599
That co evolutionary process. One one theory is called the

913
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:27,440
red Queen theory, which is that you have to run

914
00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:29,559
as fast as you can just to stay in place.

915
00:53:30,119 --> 00:53:33,639
And there's there's gene gene for gene interactions, so you know,

916
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:38,119
the the tree will evolve a gene for resistance to

917
00:53:38,199 --> 00:53:41,800
the blight, the blight will evolve a gene for resistance

918
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:44,199
to that, and that just keeps going on and on forever.

919
00:53:44,679 --> 00:53:48,719
And so there's thousands of genes that are likely involved

920
00:53:49,079 --> 00:53:54,199
in blight resistance. In Chinese chestnut, they've found a disease

921
00:53:54,320 --> 00:53:59,519
resistant losai on almost all of the chromosomes in Chinese chestnut,

922
00:53:59,559 --> 00:54:01,639
So there's so election going on on all of those

923
00:54:01,719 --> 00:54:06,719
chromosomes for resistance. So they've got different mechanisms. One is

924
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:11,360
the oxalic acid degradation. They have a multi step pathway

925
00:54:11,679 --> 00:54:15,519
for that which is hypothesized, it hasn't actually been fully

926
00:54:15,599 --> 00:54:20,440
elucidated yet. And then they have different types of tannins

927
00:54:20,480 --> 00:54:26,519
they use. They have a different enzyme inhibiting proteins that

928
00:54:26,679 --> 00:54:32,719
they express, and all that adds up to them compartmentalizing

929
00:54:33,159 --> 00:54:35,880
the fungus. They wall off the fungus and hold it

930
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:39,280
in place and then basically outgrow the fungus.

931
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:42,760
Speaker 1: So they're just they're throwing a ton of shit at it. Basically, yes,

932
00:54:43,079 --> 00:54:45,320
and this was again the result of millions of years

933
00:54:45,360 --> 00:54:51,239
of coevolution and ecosystem and Chryfhenectara parasitica is an invasive fungus,

934
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:53,159
which is another point to make. That's another thing I

935
00:54:53,159 --> 00:54:56,079
always hear about. Again, it's a fifty to fifty chance

936
00:54:56,159 --> 00:54:59,800
with the permaculture people, not all hashtag not all permaculture people,

937
00:55:00,199 --> 00:55:03,280
but they're always not always fifty to fifty percent of

938
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:05,800
the time. I feel like they're just denying invasion biology,

939
00:55:06,639 --> 00:55:08,239
which is easy to do when you don't understand it.

940
00:55:08,239 --> 00:55:09,880
I used to be like that fifteen years ago. I

941
00:55:09,960 --> 00:55:12,599
get it, but it's this is this is invasive. What

942
00:55:12,760 --> 00:55:17,079
invasive means. It's not going back to some mythical period

943
00:55:17,119 --> 00:55:19,880
and time where you know everything was pure, or any

944
00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:22,920
of these goofy fucking you know, straw man arguments people make.

945
00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:28,400
It's about ecological function and coevolution in an ecosystem. And

946
00:55:28,519 --> 00:55:31,360
when you when you cross that ocean that's been separating

947
00:55:31,440 --> 00:55:36,079
North American ecosystem from the Asian ecosystem, and you're basically

948
00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:39,360
eradicating those ten million years of coevolution, and now you've

949
00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:42,559
got this pathogen that's a mild pain in the ass,

950
00:55:44,559 --> 00:55:47,440
you know, pragmatically speaking for the tree that it's co

951
00:55:47,599 --> 00:55:50,199
evolved with, and now it's this fucking nightmare that just

952
00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:56,360
basically causes an extinction. American justnut would be extinct one

953
00:55:56,480 --> 00:55:59,880
day were it not for hybridizing programs, and wow, that

954
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:01,719
it's not even it would still be extinct. It's not

955
00:56:01,719 --> 00:56:05,559
a pure American or not for this transgenic process, it

956
00:56:05,599 --> 00:56:08,800
would be extinct. There's no natural resistance, there's no way

957
00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:11,880
around it. It would be gone. Give another century or two,

958
00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:16,639
the stump sprouts run out of juice, they're no longer functional.

959
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:20,440
Boom that that tree is gone. It only exists and

960
00:56:20,599 --> 00:56:22,679
hopefully fossil record somewhere.

961
00:56:23,960 --> 00:56:26,840
Speaker 2: Right And even though it's not like extinct right now,

962
00:56:27,039 --> 00:56:30,199
it's functionally extinct. It's completely lost its place in the

963
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:34,960
ecosystem and it's not feeding the ecosystem the way it

964
00:56:35,119 --> 00:56:38,400
used to, and it's not reproducing and replacing itself.

965
00:56:38,719 --> 00:56:42,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of those fucking blocks that a huge

966
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:45,239
block has been taken out of that Jenga tower that

967
00:56:45,440 --> 00:56:49,280
is the North American East Coast ecosystem, and it's teetering.

968
00:56:50,039 --> 00:56:53,800
So that's why I applauded the work that you guys

969
00:56:53,840 --> 00:56:56,599
are doing. And I can't imagine why anybody would be

970
00:56:56,639 --> 00:56:59,599
against it. I certainly understand it, you know, exercising caution,

971
00:56:59,719 --> 00:57:03,719
but I don't understand why anybody would just would be

972
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:07,239
against it, are quick to condemn it, or you know,

973
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:10,239
it's the best we can do. We're affecting as a species,

974
00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:13,360
we're affecting life on earth, no matter what, we might

975
00:57:13,400 --> 00:57:16,280
as well try to do it in a positive fashion.

976
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:20,840
You know, well studied, et cetera. What made you? What

977
00:57:21,000 --> 00:57:22,559
made you want to take this up? What got you

978
00:57:22,679 --> 00:57:26,920
interested in chestnuts? Because you're not from You didn't grow

979
00:57:27,039 --> 00:57:29,239
up in the native range of these things, did you.

980
00:57:30,480 --> 00:57:34,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I'm actually originally from North Dakota, and

981
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:38,119
when I was in undergrad at the University of North Dakota,

982
00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:43,119
I worked on transgenic poplars. Poplars are actually another one

983
00:57:43,159 --> 00:57:47,280
of my things I'm really interested in, which is funny

984
00:57:47,360 --> 00:57:49,599
to some people. A lot of people think they're just weeds,

985
00:57:49,679 --> 00:57:52,320
but I'm really into poplars. But anyway, I was working

986
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:55,559
on transgenic popular and undergrad and I was looking at

987
00:57:56,119 --> 00:57:57,880
what I wanted to do for grad school, and I

988
00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:02,559
learned about the American Trust and how they're using this technology,

989
00:58:03,199 --> 00:58:07,800
this these molecular biology tools to have like really positive change.

990
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:11,119
You know. This is such a great example of what

991
00:58:11,320 --> 00:58:15,480
the technology can be used for for good, and that

992
00:58:15,639 --> 00:58:19,519
really appealed to me, you know, And so I came

993
00:58:19,559 --> 00:58:22,639
out here to Syracuse to work on a new line

994
00:58:22,639 --> 00:58:27,320
of chestnut that actually uses a promoter from Poplar. That

995
00:58:27,440 --> 00:58:30,960
was actually my master's degree project, and I'm actually still

996
00:58:31,039 --> 00:58:34,000
working on that project now, this new line of American

997
00:58:34,159 --> 00:58:37,960
chestnut that uses the same oxogene, but it uses a

998
00:58:38,079 --> 00:58:39,960
promoter from Poplar to regulate it.

999
00:58:40,159 --> 00:58:43,559
Speaker 1: When you say promoter and terminator, can you explain to

1000
00:58:43,599 --> 00:58:47,159
everybody what those are? Basically, they're just what begin and

1001
00:58:47,320 --> 00:58:49,880
and a gene region yep.

1002
00:58:50,400 --> 00:58:54,480
Speaker 2: So, a promoter is a non coding region of DNA

1003
00:58:55,039 --> 00:58:59,320
that regulates how a gene's expressed. It regulates where it's

1004
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:02,440
expressed in plant, so in the leaves or the stem

1005
00:59:02,599 --> 00:59:07,000
or the roots it expressed. It determines when it's expressed,

1006
00:59:07,039 --> 00:59:11,079
whether it's expressed all the time or only under certain conditions,

1007
00:59:11,559 --> 00:59:14,039
and it controls how highly it's expressed, So if it

1008
00:59:14,559 --> 00:59:18,000
expresses a lot of gene product or if maybe just

1009
00:59:18,039 --> 00:59:19,320
a moderate or a low amount.

1010
00:59:21,079 --> 00:59:26,079
Speaker 1: Okay, So yeah, it's basically the start and stop. It's

1011
00:59:26,119 --> 00:59:28,440
a non coded region, but they're still really important for

1012
00:59:28,519 --> 00:59:29,559
how the gene is expressed.

1013
00:59:30,039 --> 00:59:32,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a genetic switch. So it's like the

1014
00:59:34,159 --> 00:59:37,199
genetic switch that controls how a gene's expressed.

1015
00:59:39,000 --> 00:59:44,400
Speaker 1: Okay, So okay, Well, changing the subject briefly from DNA

1016
00:59:44,679 --> 00:59:50,440
to ecological function. How does where does so? Cryphenectria obviously

1017
00:59:50,599 --> 00:59:53,480
can exploit other food sources. It's not a specifist for

1018
00:59:53,639 --> 00:59:55,760
castanas because it's got to be hiding out somewhere in

1019
00:59:55,800 --> 01:00:00,159
the ecosystem since all of the all the chestnut are

1020
01:00:00,199 --> 01:00:03,199
basically gone except for stump sprouts. Where does it? Where

1021
01:00:03,199 --> 01:00:03,880
does it hide out?

1022
01:00:05,599 --> 01:00:10,559
Speaker 2: Yeah? So it's also a saffar troph. It can consume

1023
01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:14,920
dead wood, and it also has a host range that

1024
01:00:15,079 --> 01:00:17,760
goes beyond just chessnut. It can actually also go on

1025
01:00:18,119 --> 01:00:22,960
several different oak species and a few different maples I believe,

1026
01:00:24,199 --> 01:00:27,519
But yeah, it it can host on most of the

1027
01:00:27,599 --> 01:00:30,400
oak species, and it can actually be an opportunistic pathogen

1028
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:34,000
on some of them. Like the oglethorpe oak and the

1029
01:00:34,079 --> 01:00:36,719
scarlet oak. It can be pretty pathogenic.

1030
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:39,440
Speaker 1: On what what species of quircus are those? Do you

1031
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:39,960
know of him?

1032
01:00:40,920 --> 01:00:45,280
Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, I think that's Quirkus orgle oglethal bit and

1033
01:00:46,039 --> 01:00:51,079
I believe. And this scarlet oak escapes me. I'm not

1034
01:00:51,159 --> 01:00:51,440
sure what.

1035
01:00:51,840 --> 01:00:54,840
Speaker 1: One of the prime reasons for not naming plants after

1036
01:00:54,960 --> 01:00:58,360
people is just that how fucking ridiculous some of these

1037
01:00:59,239 --> 01:01:01,480
these names are when you try to latinize them and

1038
01:01:01,559 --> 01:01:04,440
put them as a species epithet. Yeah.

1039
01:01:04,559 --> 01:01:07,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, it can be pretty silly when someone inserts the name.

1040
01:01:07,559 --> 01:01:10,559
Speaker 1: For its.

1041
01:01:10,719 --> 01:01:10,840
Speaker 2: Uh.

1042
01:01:11,400 --> 01:01:13,199
Speaker 1: Okay, so this thing's hiding out. I mean it's a

1043
01:01:13,239 --> 01:01:15,920
sapartrough too. So this is like a wonderfungus.

1044
01:01:16,239 --> 01:01:19,800
Speaker 2: Fuck yeah, it's not going anywhere. It's here for good.

1045
01:01:19,880 --> 01:01:22,880
It's the only way to get around is to create

1046
01:01:22,960 --> 01:01:24,079
trees that are resistant to it.

1047
01:01:24,239 --> 01:01:26,480
Speaker 1: What was when it because there was a virus that

1048
01:01:26,639 --> 01:01:29,159
was taking the fungus back or putting a hold on it, right,

1049
01:01:29,199 --> 01:01:31,480
I mean the fungus has to have has to have

1050
01:01:31,719 --> 01:01:35,039
some ecological checks and balances back home too. Do you

1051
01:01:35,119 --> 01:01:35,920
know about any of those?

1052
01:01:37,079 --> 01:01:41,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this type of micovirus that's called hypovirus and

1053
01:01:42,639 --> 01:01:49,320
it can get into the fungus and decrease the fungus's pathogenicity.

1054
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:53,719
And this was originally discovered in Europe. They also have

1055
01:01:53,920 --> 01:01:57,639
blight over there, and they discovered a few decades ago

1056
01:01:57,800 --> 01:02:00,840
that there were some kinkers that were healing on their trees,

1057
01:02:01,400 --> 01:02:03,840
and they discovered that there were these viruses in them

1058
01:02:04,639 --> 01:02:07,719
that were causing the blight to kind of get turned around.

1059
01:02:08,920 --> 01:02:11,039
But in the US they tried to apply that in

1060
01:02:11,119 --> 01:02:12,960
the US and it didn't work as well. And the

1061
01:02:13,039 --> 01:02:15,719
reason for that is in Europe there was very limited

1062
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:19,840
genetic diversity in their blight fungus, and so the virus

1063
01:02:19,960 --> 01:02:23,480
is very easy to spread around. But in the United

1064
01:02:23,519 --> 01:02:26,039
States there's a ton of genetic diversity in the blight.

1065
01:02:26,440 --> 01:02:30,920
There was probably several different introductions, and so these different

1066
01:02:30,960 --> 01:02:34,280
blight strains are not compatible and so the virus doesn't

1067
01:02:34,280 --> 01:02:35,199
spread between them.

1068
01:02:35,480 --> 01:02:38,519
Speaker 1: And so this fungus was brought over on other chestnut trees,

1069
01:02:38,599 --> 01:02:40,599
right on Chinese and Japanese chestnuts or.

1070
01:02:41,400 --> 01:02:44,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was originally brought over on Japanese chestnuts.

1071
01:02:44,559 --> 01:02:50,400
Speaker 1: Wow. Fuck, that's man, that's brutal. So and in Europe

1072
01:02:50,480 --> 01:02:54,599
the species is Castania sativa. It's different chestnut species too.

1073
01:02:54,719 --> 01:02:57,800
Speaker 2: Yes, yep. And it's also a susceptible species.

1074
01:02:58,559 --> 01:03:00,880
Speaker 1: Is it slightly more resistant then tata?

1075
01:03:01,880 --> 01:03:07,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is slightly more, but not that much. Still susceptible,

1076
01:03:07,760 --> 01:03:08,719
so it gets killed by it.

1077
01:03:09,360 --> 01:03:12,400
Speaker 1: Well, how do you think, I mean, when these species

1078
01:03:12,519 --> 01:03:14,960
diverge from the same common ancestor, how did one end

1079
01:03:15,039 --> 01:03:17,440
up in Asia and one end up in the eastern

1080
01:03:17,519 --> 01:03:21,159
North America? Just probably because the higher latitudes were warmer,

1081
01:03:21,239 --> 01:03:23,599
and that was probably because they weren't going across the ocean.

1082
01:03:24,159 --> 01:03:28,039
There were probably ranges that extended up into the Arctic

1083
01:03:29,440 --> 01:03:31,280
when it was a lot warmer up there, and then

1084
01:03:31,320 --> 01:03:34,320
would make their way down, you know, shorter distance at

1085
01:03:34,320 --> 01:03:36,760
the top of the globe versus at the lower latitudes.

1086
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:39,400
I mean, is that how it's surmised because there's a

1087
01:03:39,440 --> 01:03:41,920
lot of disjuncts between eastern North America and Asia.

1088
01:03:43,119 --> 01:03:47,639
Speaker 2: Yeah. Millions of years ago, all the continents were connected

1089
01:03:47,920 --> 01:03:52,360
in the northern hemisphere, and so the chesshunt was able

1090
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:56,679
to spread from its origin in Asia around to North

1091
01:03:56,679 --> 01:04:01,159
America and into Europe before they were eventually separated by

1092
01:04:01,199 --> 01:04:02,039
plate tech tonics.

1093
01:04:02,599 --> 01:04:04,880
Speaker 1: I mean, that was much longer though, that wasn't just

1094
01:04:04,960 --> 01:04:06,760
ten or twenty million years ago, That was a lot

1095
01:04:06,880 --> 01:04:10,119
much longer period of time, right, Or am I wrong?

1096
01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:12,079
Speaker 2: No? I believe you're right.

1097
01:04:12,360 --> 01:04:15,360
Speaker 1: But these things because these things separated not that long ago,

1098
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:17,719
only ten or twelve million years ago according to the

1099
01:04:17,800 --> 01:04:21,519
molecular clock est mints. So I mean, but either way,

1100
01:04:21,599 --> 01:04:24,920
it's still a shorter distance if you're going across bodies

1101
01:04:25,000 --> 01:04:29,239
of water, migratory paths, you know, between birds or among

1102
01:04:29,320 --> 01:04:32,199
birds are going to be again shorter at the top

1103
01:04:32,280 --> 01:04:35,599
of the ball the globe than at the lower latitudes,

1104
01:04:36,360 --> 01:04:38,760
you know. So I assume that's what it was. It

1105
01:04:38,880 --> 01:04:42,079
was just the Arctic was warmer, and because there's a

1106
01:04:42,119 --> 01:04:45,760
lot of fucking disjunctions, whereas you know, humid and the

1107
01:04:46,239 --> 01:04:48,960
climates of eastern North America and Asia are similar enough

1108
01:04:49,000 --> 01:04:55,360
in humidity and temperature, et cetera. But in western North America,

1109
01:04:55,519 --> 01:04:57,800
had any of those species been there, you know, in

1110
01:04:57,840 --> 01:05:00,760
the western North America you've got these orogenes, these mountains uplifting,

1111
01:05:00,840 --> 01:05:04,440
creating rain shadows, whole western part of the continents drying out,

1112
01:05:05,280 --> 01:05:07,119
and so a lot of stuff was probably there, but

1113
01:05:07,199 --> 01:05:07,840
one extinct.

1114
01:05:08,599 --> 01:05:12,440
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. They've found chestnut fossils in like the

1115
01:05:12,559 --> 01:05:16,239
Rocky Mountains and on the West coast, and chestnut used

1116
01:05:16,280 --> 01:05:20,159
to be all across North America. But when the mountain

1117
01:05:20,239 --> 01:05:22,960
ranges on the West coast were raised up, like you said,

1118
01:05:23,039 --> 01:05:25,280
and tried out the middle of the continent, that's when

1119
01:05:25,519 --> 01:05:29,639
most of those chestnuts were pushed to the East coast.

1120
01:05:30,239 --> 01:05:32,679
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess the only place they survived was the

1121
01:05:32,719 --> 01:05:36,079
East coast because it was warmer. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah,

1122
01:05:36,079 --> 01:05:38,599
they used to be fucking Don redwoods. I mean even

1123
01:05:38,679 --> 01:05:43,679
like twelve million years ago. I've found huge fossilized permenized

1124
01:05:45,199 --> 01:05:47,920
some with still fucking wood fibers in them, like the

1125
01:05:48,199 --> 01:05:55,119
really like partially permenialized wood fibers in southeastern Oregon northwestern Nevada,

1126
01:05:55,400 --> 01:06:00,599
and the layer of basalt above them is like twelve

1127
01:06:00,639 --> 01:06:04,920
million years old. I think these these you know, dispetrified

1128
01:06:04,960 --> 01:06:10,760
wood was estimated to be fourteen million years old. I

1129
01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:13,880
looked at the layer of rock that it isn't entombed

1130
01:06:13,920 --> 01:06:18,039
in white volcanic ash. But that's crazy.

1131
01:06:18,440 --> 01:06:21,239
Speaker 2: The comparison to the Don redwood as far as the

1132
01:06:21,320 --> 01:06:24,920
migration goes, because you can find Don redwood across you know,

1133
01:06:25,039 --> 01:06:28,159
North America and Asia and Europe the same way the

1134
01:06:28,280 --> 01:06:31,320
chestnuts were because it was that area was all connected.

1135
01:06:31,519 --> 01:06:36,800
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, similar and similar, similar climate, similar humidity

1136
01:06:36,920 --> 01:06:42,840
requirements between medisaquoia and American chestnut. Medisaquoia doesn't do well

1137
01:06:43,599 --> 01:06:46,000
in a dry climate. I mean, even if it's growing

1138
01:06:46,079 --> 01:06:50,199
in a fucking river, it's there's still just the that

1139
01:06:50,480 --> 01:06:54,559
dry summer era just pulls moisture out of it too quick.

1140
01:06:54,800 --> 01:06:56,800
But yeah, that's that's true. I didn't even think of

1141
01:06:56,880 --> 01:06:59,719
that because that's where medisaquoia is still in existence today.

1142
01:06:59,800 --> 01:07:04,239
Is is eastern China, right. I think there's like five

1143
01:07:04,320 --> 01:07:06,280
thousand trees left. God, I would love to go there.

1144
01:07:06,320 --> 01:07:08,519
Do you know anyone who's seen Medisaicoia in the wild.

1145
01:07:08,599 --> 01:07:12,239
There's far more in cultivation than there are in left

1146
01:07:12,320 --> 01:07:13,159
and habitat.

1147
01:07:14,079 --> 01:07:15,880
Speaker 2: I don't. That would be a really cool trip, though.

1148
01:07:15,880 --> 01:07:19,280
I've always wanted to go to China for a botanical

1149
01:07:19,320 --> 01:07:21,519
adventure because they got all the cool stuff over there.

1150
01:07:21,920 --> 01:07:24,519
Speaker 1: Yeah I have. I haven't even touched Asia yet, man,

1151
01:07:24,599 --> 01:07:27,280
except like the fucking area right around the Hong Kong airport.

1152
01:07:27,320 --> 01:07:28,920
I would love to go. I'm kind of saving it

1153
01:07:29,000 --> 01:07:32,440
till I can start digesting it all at once, and

1154
01:07:32,519 --> 01:07:34,039
I want to just dip my feet in and become

1155
01:07:34,079 --> 01:07:36,679
familiar with these certain families and lineages and shit, and

1156
01:07:36,719 --> 01:07:38,559
then leave and not come back for three years.

1157
01:07:38,599 --> 01:07:42,239
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, I remember when I was taking undergrad

1158
01:07:42,400 --> 01:07:45,079
body course and you're Washington documentary of the sky and

1159
01:07:45,199 --> 01:07:48,079
mountains in China, and he's just going like down the list,

1160
01:07:48,239 --> 01:07:52,760
like every flowering plant family was represented on this hillside.

1161
01:07:52,760 --> 01:07:55,599
You know, he's going basically down the list and everything

1162
01:07:55,679 --> 01:07:58,159
was there because you know that that's the center of

1163
01:07:58,239 --> 01:08:00,000
radiation for all angiosprings.

1164
01:08:01,119 --> 01:08:08,000
Speaker 1: Really my recollection, Wow, Jesus God, damn. Yeah, man, I

1165
01:08:08,039 --> 01:08:10,599
gotta get over there. And plus, it seems like China

1166
01:08:10,960 --> 01:08:14,559
actually funds a lot of science, at least compared to

1167
01:08:14,639 --> 01:08:15,519
the United States.

1168
01:08:15,920 --> 01:08:19,319
Speaker 2: You know, yeah they do. They've got really great forestry programs.

1169
01:08:19,600 --> 01:08:21,880
Speaker 1: Fucking Ronald Reagan quote in the eighties like we're not

1170
01:08:22,000 --> 01:08:27,399
here to subsidize intellectual curiosity. And so fifty years later,

1171
01:08:27,520 --> 01:08:31,640
you got a fucking population that's, you know, getting dumber

1172
01:08:31,720 --> 01:08:36,680
by the with every passing year. Well I guess that.

1173
01:08:37,479 --> 01:08:42,000
I guess that concludes. I mean, I got time left,

1174
01:08:42,039 --> 01:08:43,279
but I don't.

1175
01:08:43,560 --> 01:08:45,399
Speaker 2: Talk about some newer stuff we've been working on.

1176
01:08:45,680 --> 01:08:48,000
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, Yeah, what's what's been going on?

1177
01:08:49,079 --> 01:08:53,079
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mentioned briefly this, uh, this new line

1178
01:08:53,159 --> 01:08:56,840
using the palslar promoter. We're pretty excited about it because

1179
01:08:57,319 --> 01:09:02,239
this oxogene, it is highly regulated by that promoter where

1180
01:09:02,319 --> 01:09:05,159
it's kept turned off most of the time. It's called

1181
01:09:05,199 --> 01:09:08,800
an inducible promoter. And so basically what that promoter does

1182
01:09:08,840 --> 01:09:12,760
is it keeps expression turned off until the trees are

1183
01:09:12,800 --> 01:09:16,880
actually infected with the blight fungus, and then the gene

1184
01:09:16,880 --> 01:09:20,239
gets turned on and then it can mount a defense.

1185
01:09:20,800 --> 01:09:23,800
And so what that does is it preserves resources of

1186
01:09:23,880 --> 01:09:26,600
the tree that would otherwise be going to the oxode

1187
01:09:26,640 --> 01:09:29,680
expression to be used for other stuff like growth.

1188
01:09:30,199 --> 01:09:32,680
Speaker 1: And so instead of so, how does the oxygen work

1189
01:09:32,720 --> 01:09:37,239
in It produces an enzyme that breaks down oxalic acid.

1190
01:09:38,119 --> 01:09:40,960
Speaker 2: Yep, So it produces this enzyme. It's a cell wall

1191
01:09:41,039 --> 01:09:45,199
embedded enzyme. And yeah, it breaks down that acid into

1192
01:09:45,279 --> 01:09:47,319
hydrogen peroxide and CO two and.

1193
01:09:47,399 --> 01:09:50,399
Speaker 1: So if but it's not in this case with this

1194
01:09:50,600 --> 01:09:56,159
new promoter, it's not producing that enzyme unless unless there's

1195
01:09:56,199 --> 01:09:58,279
an actual infection, Unless an infection is.

1196
01:09:58,319 --> 01:10:04,680
Speaker 2: Detected, right, it's induced by physical damage or by pathogen infection.

1197
01:10:05,279 --> 01:10:09,600
That when a pathogen infects a plant, it releases all

1198
01:10:09,720 --> 01:10:13,159
kinds of chemicals into the plant tissue and those chemicals

1199
01:10:13,199 --> 01:10:18,600
will actually trigger the promoter to start producing expression.

1200
01:10:18,399 --> 01:10:21,920
Speaker 1: The oxidale like acid that's produced by chryphenectria. What what

1201
01:10:22,199 --> 01:10:26,640
does that's a byproduct of the enzyme that the fungus produces.

1202
01:10:26,760 --> 01:10:28,760
What can we get into that? What's going on there?

1203
01:10:29,920 --> 01:10:36,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, So oxalic acid is actually produced from oxalo acetate,

1204
01:10:36,800 --> 01:10:42,239
which is a normal metabolic compound that's produced like during

1205
01:10:42,319 --> 01:10:47,439
cellular respiration. And there's this pathway that ends with it's

1206
01:10:47,479 --> 01:10:52,600
called oxaloacetate and hydrolyse and it basically converts that oxalo

1207
01:10:52,640 --> 01:10:57,800
acetate into oxalic acid. And so that mechanism is really

1208
01:10:57,840 --> 01:11:01,199
well understood because of that high overhelence research that we

1209
01:11:01,279 --> 01:11:01,760
talked about.

1210
01:11:01,920 --> 01:11:04,359
Speaker 1: And this is we're talking about what cellular respiration of

1211
01:11:04,399 --> 01:11:06,239
the fungus or what are we talking about here?

1212
01:11:07,039 --> 01:11:10,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just during normal like metabolism, you know, producing

1213
01:11:11,359 --> 01:11:15,039
ATP in the citric acid cycle, oxal acid is.

1214
01:11:15,039 --> 01:11:17,960
Speaker 1: Just like the of the fungus you're talking about. In

1215
01:11:18,079 --> 01:11:20,039
the fungus, we got to specify that for anybody listening

1216
01:11:20,039 --> 01:11:22,039
to this. So this is occurring in the fungus.

1217
01:11:23,119 --> 01:11:28,279
Speaker 2: Yes, the fungus is drawing its own resources and creating

1218
01:11:28,359 --> 01:11:31,119
the acid. And then the acid gets secreted out of

1219
01:11:31,239 --> 01:11:34,279
the fungus into the tissue of the plant and that

1220
01:11:34,479 --> 01:11:37,199
kills the tissue of the plant. And then the fungus

1221
01:11:37,279 --> 01:11:41,800
will release this other enzyme called oxalate decarboxylates and it

1222
01:11:41,880 --> 01:11:44,680
breaks down the acid and then the funst grows into

1223
01:11:44,760 --> 01:11:46,279
that dead tissue and consumes it.

1224
01:11:47,840 --> 01:11:52,079
Speaker 1: Wow, so it's not really a byproduct. I mean it

1225
01:11:52,239 --> 01:11:56,399
is initially oxalic acid is a byproduct of just cellular

1226
01:11:56,439 --> 01:11:58,960
respiration in the fungus, but then it serves the fungus

1227
01:11:59,039 --> 01:12:04,800
by killing the tissue first and then allowing other enzymes

1228
01:12:04,840 --> 01:12:06,199
to move into the tree tissue.

1229
01:12:07,039 --> 01:12:10,159
Speaker 2: Yep, that's right. And the acid does a few things.

1230
01:12:10,560 --> 01:12:13,039
It kind of breaks apart the cell walls of the

1231
01:12:13,520 --> 01:12:18,359
tree tissue and it makes it more digestible, and then

1232
01:12:18,399 --> 01:12:22,079
it secreased digestive enzymes into that dead tissue to break

1233
01:12:22,119 --> 01:12:24,520
it down more before the fungus consumes it.

1234
01:12:24,680 --> 01:12:27,319
Speaker 1: And would those digestive enzymes by the fungus not be

1235
01:12:27,439 --> 01:12:30,840
able to break down the tree tissue. If this oxalic

1236
01:12:30,920 --> 01:12:32,479
acid hadn't been there first.

1237
01:12:33,279 --> 01:12:38,039
Speaker 2: They're greatly reduced. The advocacy of everything else is reduced

1238
01:12:38,079 --> 01:12:40,960
without the oxalic acid. It's one of the main components.

1239
01:12:41,319 --> 01:12:46,800
They've actually taken fungus, normal healthy fungus, and they've disrupted

1240
01:12:46,840 --> 01:12:51,279
the gene that makes oxalic acid and then infected trees

1241
01:12:51,319 --> 01:12:55,479
with that mutant fungus, and the pathogenicity is greatly reduced.

1242
01:12:55,560 --> 01:13:01,479
So everything kind of revolves around that oxalic acid.

1243
01:13:01,800 --> 01:13:04,640
Speaker 1: We'll talk would there be a way using like gene

1244
01:13:04,680 --> 01:13:11,520
drive technology to create oxalic acid impotent strains of fungus

1245
01:13:11,640 --> 01:13:15,479
and then throw that into the the fungus itself, like

1246
01:13:15,600 --> 01:13:17,640
throw that into the population. I mean, I'm not saying

1247
01:13:17,640 --> 01:13:19,800
we should do this, but what is that theoretical is like?

1248
01:13:19,960 --> 01:13:22,560
Is that is that Another approach is like basically what

1249
01:13:22,600 --> 01:13:25,640
they do with mosquitoes. They create these bunk you know,

1250
01:13:26,279 --> 01:13:31,880
shooting blanks mosquitoes. You know, that produced an entirely male

1251
01:13:31,960 --> 01:13:34,920
population of mosquitos, and then it's slowly over time, you

1252
01:13:34,960 --> 01:13:37,880
can have to keep putting it out there, these dud mosquitos,

1253
01:13:37,880 --> 01:13:40,680
but eventually you reduce the mosquito population by like ninety

1254
01:13:40,680 --> 01:13:43,039
six percent using gene drive.

1255
01:13:43,960 --> 01:13:47,319
Speaker 2: The main issue there would just be the sexual incompatibility

1256
01:13:47,520 --> 01:13:50,680
between the strains like we were talking about before. But

1257
01:13:50,800 --> 01:13:53,560
there there is actually a lab right now that's working

1258
01:13:53,640 --> 01:13:57,600
on genetically engineering the fungus and what they're doing is

1259
01:13:58,079 --> 01:14:00,560
creating what was called the super donor, And what they're

1260
01:14:00,600 --> 01:14:04,600
doing is knocking out genes within the fungus that creates

1261
01:14:04,640 --> 01:14:09,760
those barriers for the different strains. So basically that strain

1262
01:14:09,920 --> 01:14:13,520
is able to spread virus between all strains.

1263
01:14:14,039 --> 01:14:17,600
Speaker 1: Wow shit, Okay, well that's good, is there? What would

1264
01:14:17,600 --> 01:14:20,920
be the the thing about repercussions? Like back in the

1265
01:14:21,119 --> 01:14:23,640
ecosystem in Asia where this fungus is native, what would

1266
01:14:23,680 --> 01:14:26,920
be the repercussions of knocking out this fungus? Say it

1267
01:14:27,000 --> 01:14:29,920
could happen of just the you know, we were trying

1268
01:14:29,920 --> 01:14:32,159
to knock out the fungus in the American ecosystem and

1269
01:14:32,239 --> 01:14:35,960
then you end up you know, the fund exploit. It's

1270
01:14:36,000 --> 01:14:38,319
so it works so well that the fungus now becomes

1271
01:14:38,359 --> 01:14:41,079
extinct in Asia. What would be that you could think

1272
01:14:41,119 --> 01:14:43,840
of what would be a potential repercussion of that now

1273
01:14:43,920 --> 01:14:46,640
that you remove this pathogen, Like what other function is

1274
01:14:46,680 --> 01:14:50,880
there a beneficial function to other organisms that this fungus

1275
01:14:52,520 --> 01:14:55,960
produces in the ecosystem of Asia where it's native Eastern Asia.

1276
01:14:57,279 --> 01:14:59,960
Speaker 2: That's a really interesting question and I don't know the answer,

1277
01:15:00,359 --> 01:15:03,840
but I do know that this fungus, they weren't even

1278
01:15:03,880 --> 01:15:07,359
aware that this fungus was a thing until it was

1279
01:15:07,399 --> 01:15:12,239
brought to America and it began infecting the American chestnut trees.

1280
01:15:12,600 --> 01:15:15,039
They later then went back to China and found it

1281
01:15:15,159 --> 01:15:17,119
in the wild and like, oh, yeah, it is in

1282
01:15:17,199 --> 01:15:19,359
the wild here. So it's so little of a problem

1283
01:15:19,439 --> 01:15:21,840
there that they weren't even aware of it until it

1284
01:15:21,960 --> 01:15:23,439
made the jump onto American chess.

1285
01:15:23,479 --> 01:15:26,239
Speaker 1: See, there was no fungal diversity survey in the early

1286
01:15:26,359 --> 01:15:29,760
twentieth century in Asia. That's the problem. You know, if

1287
01:15:29,800 --> 01:15:32,680
you had had if you had had just regular Joe's

1288
01:15:32,760 --> 01:15:37,920
regular quote citizen scientists out there studying fungi in Asia

1289
01:15:38,199 --> 01:15:40,640
in the early twentieth century, this all could have been prevented,

1290
01:15:41,479 --> 01:15:42,079
right right.

1291
01:15:42,479 --> 01:15:45,960
Speaker 2: And the original infected trees that they think were brought

1292
01:15:46,039 --> 01:15:49,439
over in the eighteen seventies, and that was before the

1293
01:15:49,880 --> 01:15:53,000
germ theory was even widely accepted, so they really had

1294
01:15:53,079 --> 01:15:54,199
no idea what they were doing.

1295
01:15:54,279 --> 01:15:57,640
Speaker 1: At that point, God as a species were such babies,

1296
01:15:57,800 --> 01:16:00,640
like we're so young, like we haven't no clue what's

1297
01:16:00,680 --> 01:16:04,000
going on. We're so oblivious to so many parts of

1298
01:16:04,159 --> 01:16:06,760
this living world that we're a part of, you know,

1299
01:16:06,920 --> 01:16:10,399
it's wild. And then you've got idiots like fucking Reagan saying, well,

1300
01:16:10,479 --> 01:16:14,640
we're out here to fund intellectual curiosity. Wow, you're gonna get.

1301
01:16:14,760 --> 01:16:17,039
That's what you're gonna get. You're gonna get, You're gonna

1302
01:16:17,039 --> 01:16:20,119
get this and more shit every I mean, it's safe

1303
01:16:20,159 --> 01:16:22,680
to say basically every tree pathogen in North America except

1304
01:16:22,680 --> 01:16:25,840
for pine beetles is an invasive species that didn't exist

1305
01:16:25,920 --> 01:16:28,319
in anywhere in the North American continent until it was

1306
01:16:28,319 --> 01:16:31,840
brought over the last one hundred two hundred years. Right right, yep,

1307
01:16:32,479 --> 01:16:34,560
What are some other bad t I mean, do you

1308
01:16:34,600 --> 01:16:36,119
have any other do you have any interest in other

1309
01:16:36,199 --> 01:16:36,960
tree pathogens?

1310
01:16:38,000 --> 01:16:40,840
Speaker 2: Yes, So one of the things that we're starting to

1311
01:16:40,880 --> 01:16:44,319
work on now is beech trees. So beach has a

1312
01:16:44,439 --> 01:16:47,159
couple of pathogens. The older one that's been around for

1313
01:16:47,199 --> 01:16:50,279
a while is beach park disease. But there's actually a

1314
01:16:50,399 --> 01:16:52,840
new one that's come out that's even worse and it's

1315
01:16:52,840 --> 01:16:57,399
called beach leaf disease, and it's caused by a limatode

1316
01:16:57,920 --> 01:17:02,760
and possibly complexes with other fungi or something like that,

1317
01:17:02,960 --> 01:17:06,880
but it's primarily caused by nematode. And we're doing some

1318
01:17:07,079 --> 01:17:11,600
of the earliest research on this disease, and we're beginning

1319
01:17:11,680 --> 01:17:15,960
to do the beginning steps of tissue culture with beach

1320
01:17:16,399 --> 01:17:21,000
and we could potentially apply the techniques that we've developed

1321
01:17:21,000 --> 01:17:23,399
in American chests not to beach as well to hopefully

1322
01:17:23,399 --> 01:17:26,000
address issues like the speechleief disease.

1323
01:17:26,399 --> 01:17:29,319
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's what's going on, is like, you know,

1324
01:17:29,439 --> 01:17:33,640
people are just swapping parts of ecosystems from one to

1325
01:17:33,720 --> 01:17:36,800
another that have been separated for dozens of millions of years,

1326
01:17:37,399 --> 01:17:40,720
and no shit, you know, not surprisingly things go haywire.

1327
01:17:41,399 --> 01:17:44,359
Not every non native is an invasive species, but every

1328
01:17:44,439 --> 01:17:48,239
invasive species is a non native primarily from another continent.

1329
01:17:48,319 --> 01:17:50,720
There's a couple exceptions. Someone sent me an email about

1330
01:17:50,720 --> 01:17:53,600
a loop and species from the West coast of North

1331
01:17:53,600 --> 01:17:56,560
America that's causing you know, that's fucking with a loop

1332
01:17:56,640 --> 01:17:59,920
and species in Maine. And then there's a you know, Rabinia,

1333
01:18:00,159 --> 01:18:03,079
which is a you know, invasive legume tree that can

1334
01:18:04,000 --> 01:18:08,520
become a little invasive out west, you know, especially because

1335
01:18:08,520 --> 01:18:11,239
it can you know, clone it sends up runners, it

1336
01:18:11,359 --> 01:18:14,800
sends up you know, cloned stems, so it basically forms

1337
01:18:14,840 --> 01:18:18,239
a colony. But but it's these continental ecosystems when you

1338
01:18:18,319 --> 01:18:21,880
start fucking around, you know, it's like it's like it's

1339
01:18:21,960 --> 01:18:25,000
like taking a piece from a nineteen eighty nine Honda

1340
01:18:25,039 --> 01:18:27,800
prelude and trying to put it in a in a

1341
01:18:27,920 --> 01:18:31,159
fucking buick, you know, and being amazed when the trans

1342
01:18:31,439 --> 01:18:36,439
transmission blows up. So it just it blows my mind.

1343
01:18:36,520 --> 01:18:39,159
I mean, it's and all of these were presumably unintentional.

1344
01:18:39,199 --> 01:18:42,000
I mean, white pine blister rust, same thing that's from

1345
01:18:42,119 --> 01:18:43,479
Germany where you know where that's from.

1346
01:18:45,399 --> 01:18:48,880
Speaker 2: I don't remember where that one's from. That sounds right

1347
01:18:48,880 --> 01:18:51,600
that I think it was originally imported on nursery stock

1348
01:18:51,680 --> 01:18:52,239
from Europe.

1349
01:18:52,479 --> 01:18:55,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's got that alternate host to that it

1350
01:18:55,359 --> 01:18:58,399
needs because it's life cycle. It's on you know, members

1351
01:18:58,439 --> 01:19:00,880
of rose ci No ribies.

1352
01:19:01,479 --> 01:19:02,760
Speaker 2: Yes, ribies, that's correct.

1353
01:19:02,920 --> 01:19:07,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. Are there there's ribies in New York Native ribies,

1354
01:19:07,680 --> 01:19:08,000
aren't there?

1355
01:19:08,840 --> 01:19:09,039
Speaker 2: Yes?

1356
01:19:09,840 --> 01:19:11,359
Speaker 1: Jesus, yeah, man.

1357
01:19:11,399 --> 01:19:14,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was there was a an eradication program in

1358
01:19:14,600 --> 01:19:17,039
the early twentieth century when they discovered that that was

1359
01:19:17,159 --> 01:19:20,159
the intermediate host of the white pine blister us and

1360
01:19:20,520 --> 01:19:23,399
they had bounties on them, and so people were out

1361
01:19:23,960 --> 01:19:26,319
destroying those on the ecosystem, but there is just too

1362
01:19:26,359 --> 01:19:27,640
many and eventually they gave.

1363
01:19:27,640 --> 01:19:33,479
Speaker 1: Up destroying ribies. Yeah, fucking idiot, They're going to take

1364
01:19:33,520 --> 01:19:36,039
out this other native plant like fucking morons. What do

1365
01:19:36,079 --> 01:19:39,199
you think again? You know, the field of ecology is

1366
01:19:39,239 --> 01:19:43,039
so young, the whole you know, it's just it's crazy.

1367
01:19:43,039 --> 01:19:47,640
You have such repercussions. It's like removing a predator from

1368
01:19:47,640 --> 01:19:51,000
an ecosystem and now the fucking deer population goes goes

1369
01:19:51,079 --> 01:19:54,439
up and they end up eating, nibbling everything down and

1370
01:19:54,520 --> 01:19:57,279
then getting deer of course don't know how to regulate

1371
01:19:57,279 --> 01:20:00,880
their own population those species really does humans included. I'm

1372
01:20:00,920 --> 01:20:03,960
not advocating anything. I'm just saying we should be encouraging,

1373
01:20:04,760 --> 01:20:07,239
let you know, reduced population. But that's all I'm saying.

1374
01:20:07,439 --> 01:20:10,520
Speaker 2: But anyway, there's should be less deer geh and.

1375
01:20:10,560 --> 01:20:13,239
Speaker 1: The deer get bit Well, that's like the Kaibab plateau.

1376
01:20:13,680 --> 01:20:17,159
The population gets too big and the whole population crashes

1377
01:20:17,319 --> 01:20:20,920
and now they're suffering among all the deer. They're starving

1378
01:20:21,039 --> 01:20:25,000
and getting ridden with disease, and it's all because of people.

1379
01:20:25,760 --> 01:20:28,239
Speaker 2: People. It seems to be a problem across the entire country.

1380
01:20:28,720 --> 01:20:32,720
Everywhere I hear there's these deer issues. There's definitely issues

1381
01:20:32,720 --> 01:20:35,119
here on the East coast, but I know there's issues

1382
01:20:35,159 --> 01:20:36,920
on the West coast, and I know they're taking out

1383
01:20:37,000 --> 01:20:40,680
the aspen forests. Like I'm sure you've heard of Pando before.

1384
01:20:41,079 --> 01:20:44,960
Pando's having a bad having issues because it can't regenerate

1385
01:20:44,960 --> 01:20:46,479
because the deer comes in and they eat all the

1386
01:20:46,600 --> 01:20:47,199
root suckers.

1387
01:20:47,359 --> 01:20:50,720
Speaker 1: Deer are horrible. They're horrible. They I mean really they

1388
01:20:51,560 --> 01:20:54,079
where I live, they're really bad. They hang out in town,

1389
01:20:54,199 --> 01:20:57,640
they nibble everything down, and they all look like shit too,

1390
01:20:57,800 --> 01:20:59,840
Like they've all got it looks like they've got main

1391
01:21:00,119 --> 01:21:01,840
or some sort of you could tell they've probably got

1392
01:21:02,600 --> 01:21:05,520
the parasites on those things. I mean, not just the tics,

1393
01:21:05,560 --> 01:21:10,039
but other disease. Yeah, yeah, and then there's probably some

1394
01:21:10,159 --> 01:21:12,239
sort of mite that they get to because they all

1395
01:21:12,359 --> 01:21:17,840
look scraggly and there's patches of fur that it's you know,

1396
01:21:17,960 --> 01:21:21,439
we've fucked up this ecosystem, this civilization we have with

1397
01:21:21,680 --> 01:21:24,800
with its mentality. You know, we haven't. We were able

1398
01:21:24,880 --> 01:21:29,399
to separate ourselves from nature through agriculture and technology, and

1399
01:21:29,520 --> 01:21:32,880
then you know, goat ourselves into thinking, fool ourselves into

1400
01:21:32,920 --> 01:21:35,479
thinking we didn't need it anymore unless it directly benefited us.

1401
01:21:35,520 --> 01:21:38,520
And so here we are with these ecological ruins. If

1402
01:21:38,520 --> 01:21:41,199
you don't hold the life around you to be sacred

1403
01:21:41,920 --> 01:21:44,000
and don't have a reverence for it, you end up

1404
01:21:44,079 --> 01:21:47,520
with this, you know, and fucking Elon Muskus wants to

1405
01:21:47,560 --> 01:21:50,319
take us to Mars now. And you know, you've got

1406
01:21:50,399 --> 01:21:53,520
this man, this grown ass man, doing these horrible dances,

1407
01:21:53,600 --> 01:21:56,560
and you could very clearly tell he just never got

1408
01:21:56,680 --> 01:21:59,279
validation as a youngster. It probably doesn't go to therapy,

1409
01:21:59,399 --> 01:22:02,600
and now he's desperate for it. He just wants to

1410
01:22:02,680 --> 01:22:04,199
be cool. But it's he's going to take all of

1411
01:22:04,279 --> 01:22:06,520
us downe It's going to take all of us down

1412
01:22:06,600 --> 01:22:10,479
with him. Oh God, the lack of self love, it

1413
01:22:10,600 --> 01:22:17,479
has such far reaching repercussions depending on the individual. So

1414
01:22:17,640 --> 01:22:20,640
this beach leaf disease, I mean, you guys are working

1415
01:22:20,720 --> 01:22:23,319
with that is what's the target of approach you have there?

1416
01:22:24,640 --> 01:22:28,000
Speaker 2: So right now we're trying to understand the disease and

1417
01:22:28,479 --> 01:22:31,239
get a good understanding of the life cycle of the

1418
01:22:31,359 --> 01:22:35,760
nematode and how it's transmitted between trees and how it

1419
01:22:35,920 --> 01:22:40,960
overwinters and and things like that, and eventually, if we're

1420
01:22:41,000 --> 01:22:46,239
able to develop a tissue culture and a transformation protocol

1421
01:22:46,319 --> 01:22:50,000
for beach, we could potentially start testing genes for resistance

1422
01:22:50,039 --> 01:22:50,920
against that disease.

1423
01:22:51,520 --> 01:22:53,800
Speaker 1: But again it'd be like a century before if this,

1424
01:22:53,960 --> 01:22:56,520
you know, before you're able to actually restore an ecosystem,

1425
01:22:56,600 --> 01:22:59,439
but you got to start somewhere and you'll at least

1426
01:22:59,479 --> 01:23:03,199
be preserved being genetic diversity. So this nematode is it

1427
01:23:03,319 --> 01:23:05,880
it's just the nematod that goes nuts. It's not the

1428
01:23:05,960 --> 01:23:09,119
nematod introducing a fungus like you've got with you know,

1429
01:23:11,279 --> 01:23:14,479
American elms, like the beetle is the vector for Dutch

1430
01:23:14,520 --> 01:23:16,399
elm disease? Is it the case like that or is it?

1431
01:23:16,560 --> 01:23:17,680
Is it just the nema toad.

1432
01:23:18,399 --> 01:23:23,439
Speaker 2: Right, that's something we're still working to understand. We don't

1433
01:23:23,479 --> 01:23:26,520
know yet if there's anything else involved other than the nematod,

1434
01:23:27,119 --> 01:23:31,960
But the nematod definitely is the causal agent that coaxed

1435
01:23:32,000 --> 01:23:35,840
postulates have been completed with that. It's been you know,

1436
01:23:36,319 --> 01:23:41,880
found on trees, isolated, inoculated onto healthy trees which then

1437
01:23:41,960 --> 01:23:46,159
became disease. So it certainly is the nematoad causing the problem.

1438
01:23:46,960 --> 01:23:49,560
Speaker 1: What about hemlock wooly addle jide.

1439
01:23:51,560 --> 01:23:55,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another big problem. We haven't started working with that,

1440
01:23:55,800 --> 01:23:59,880
but I certainly would like to work with that because

1441
01:24:00,279 --> 01:24:03,960
hemlocks are a really important species in our area, but

1442
01:24:04,560 --> 01:24:08,039
obviously across the entire East Coast. It would be nice

1443
01:24:08,119 --> 01:24:11,079
to be able to develop some lines that are resistant

1444
01:24:11,079 --> 01:24:11,239
to that.

1445
01:24:11,640 --> 01:24:13,600
Speaker 1: But it's I mean, that's a similar case. It's they're

1446
01:24:13,760 --> 01:24:15,560
probably I think that I didn't even look, but they're

1447
01:24:15,600 --> 01:24:20,000
from Asia. Native hemlock over there that isn't driven to

1448
01:24:20,119 --> 01:24:22,159
extinction by them, and then they they're brought over here

1449
01:24:22,279 --> 01:24:24,880
and now they can they're taking apart hemlocks here.

1450
01:24:26,039 --> 01:24:28,520
Speaker 2: Yes, yep, what's the name?

1451
01:24:28,640 --> 01:24:30,720
Speaker 1: What's the do you know the native host of adult

1452
01:24:30,760 --> 01:24:35,279
kids in Asia? I don't Probably another Suga species. I

1453
01:24:35,319 --> 01:24:39,279
could look that up. But got the list of tree

1454
01:24:39,359 --> 01:24:42,439
pathogens in North America that are just wrecking forests here

1455
01:24:42,439 --> 01:24:45,239
as well. Emerald ashbor that's another one. Have you guys

1456
01:24:45,279 --> 01:24:46,039
worked with those at all.

1457
01:24:46,960 --> 01:24:49,039
Speaker 2: We haven't worked with those, but I am aware that

1458
01:24:49,199 --> 01:24:52,359
there are people in other labs that are working on that.

1459
01:24:53,960 --> 01:24:59,119
I believe the US Forest Services working on approaches for

1460
01:24:59,239 --> 01:25:00,000
emerald ashboard.

1461
01:25:01,520 --> 01:25:04,800
Speaker 1: Okay, what species of Suga this hemlock wooly addl jid

1462
01:25:05,840 --> 01:25:11,000
hit in Asia, Suga cenensis, do moosa see boldy eye? Yeah,

1463
01:25:11,079 --> 01:25:15,920
so those are all probably resistant, but uh, Suga caroliniana

1464
01:25:16,000 --> 01:25:21,800
and Suga canadensis in eastern North America before nineteen fifty one,

1465
01:25:22,319 --> 01:25:25,119
the adult jid was introduced, Like man, I bet it's

1466
01:25:25,359 --> 01:25:32,960
pathogenic as hell on western hemlocks as well. Damn, what's

1467
01:25:33,039 --> 01:25:36,319
with Do you know anything about Dutch elm disease and

1468
01:25:36,439 --> 01:25:38,239
the the Beatles?

1469
01:25:39,000 --> 01:25:42,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually, we're working on ELM in our lab. We're

1470
01:25:42,960 --> 01:25:46,359
not working on Dutch ELM, but we're actually working on

1471
01:25:46,720 --> 01:25:48,920
elm yellows. Have you heard of that disease? No?

1472
01:25:49,119 --> 01:25:49,399
Speaker 1: What's that?

1473
01:25:50,359 --> 01:25:53,159
Speaker 2: It's so that's like the second disease of ELM that

1474
01:25:53,199 --> 01:25:57,079
I think came after Dutch ELM. And it's a bacterial

1475
01:25:58,439 --> 01:26:02,000
infection of the vascular tissue of the floam tubes. It's

1476
01:26:02,039 --> 01:26:05,319
a it's a fytal plasma similar to like citrus greening

1477
01:26:05,399 --> 01:26:09,479
if you're familiar with that, and it's spread by leaf hoppers.

1478
01:26:10,279 --> 01:26:12,279
Speaker 1: Native leaf hoppers or invasive ones.

1479
01:26:12,760 --> 01:26:14,000
Speaker 2: I believe they are native.

1480
01:26:14,199 --> 01:26:16,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, do you know the beetles that hit the

1481
01:26:16,960 --> 01:26:20,079
the elm trees and spread Dutch helm? Are they native?

1482
01:26:22,159 --> 01:26:24,159
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I'm not sure about that one.

1483
01:26:24,239 --> 01:26:26,279
Speaker 1: I could, I could look that up. Okay, So, well,

1484
01:26:26,319 --> 01:26:29,840
tell me about this, uh, this other pathoge in this bacteria.

1485
01:26:31,479 --> 01:26:35,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's this bacteria is a phytal plasma, which

1486
01:26:35,359 --> 01:26:38,960
is kind of like a strange type of bacteria that

1487
01:26:40,119 --> 01:26:43,039
they're really hard to study because you can't culture them.

1488
01:26:43,319 --> 01:26:48,119
They they they have to be within host tissue, and

1489
01:26:48,239 --> 01:26:50,439
so that makes studying it very difficult because you can't

1490
01:26:50,520 --> 01:26:53,720
culture it and do your normal types of studies you

1491
01:26:53,800 --> 01:27:02,199
do on microbes. And so it's causing this flowing tube disorder.

1492
01:27:02,279 --> 01:27:04,800
It causes the tree to turn yellow, so we call

1493
01:27:04,880 --> 01:27:08,319
it elm yellows. First you'll see the leaves of the

1494
01:27:08,359 --> 01:27:11,119
county to turn yellow and then eventually the tree dies.

1495
01:27:11,680 --> 01:27:16,000
And so we're looking at creating transformation protocols and testing

1496
01:27:16,119 --> 01:27:21,560
genes for both the bacteria and potentially for the vector

1497
01:27:21,600 --> 01:27:23,359
as well. That that leaf hopper.

1498
01:27:23,880 --> 01:27:28,479
Speaker 1: Jesus, Okay, yeah, I just looked. Yeah, the bark beetles

1499
01:27:28,520 --> 01:27:30,880
that are the beetles that's yeah, it's a bark beetle.

1500
01:27:31,079 --> 01:27:33,800
The bark beetles that spread Dutch some of them are native,

1501
01:27:34,560 --> 01:27:37,000
So that's gonna be that's gonna be another component of

1502
01:27:37,039 --> 01:27:40,880
the ecosystem that's removed if elms goes a beetle that

1503
01:27:41,279 --> 01:27:45,119
that you know, needs that that parasitizes it, but doesn't

1504
01:27:45,399 --> 01:27:49,840
take it out unless this fungus is present. So God,

1505
01:27:49,960 --> 01:27:55,159
that's fucking it's brutal. So what is the with this?

1506
01:27:55,560 --> 01:28:00,520
How far? How widespread is this this bacteria that that

1507
01:28:00,680 --> 01:28:03,000
hits elm trees? And what's it called? Yellow?

1508
01:28:03,119 --> 01:28:10,319
Speaker 2: What? Yeah? Elm? Yellows elm the yellow Okay, spread it

1509
01:28:10,720 --> 01:28:13,560
on the East coast and I don't think it's spread

1510
01:28:13,760 --> 01:28:17,199
across the entire range yet. But yeah, it's like an

1511
01:28:17,279 --> 01:28:18,159
emerging disease.

1512
01:28:18,760 --> 01:28:21,079
Speaker 1: Do you know, are there is there any resistance and

1513
01:28:21,279 --> 01:28:24,560
also was there any resistance to Dutch elm disease among

1514
01:28:24,640 --> 01:28:25,359
American elms?

1515
01:28:26,159 --> 01:28:28,800
Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't think there's resistance to either of them

1516
01:28:28,920 --> 01:28:30,159
in the pure species.

1517
01:28:30,720 --> 01:28:36,479
Speaker 1: Jesus God, that's fucking and probably a similar case, millions

1518
01:28:36,520 --> 01:28:38,760
of years of co evolution in another ecosystem and then

1519
01:28:38,800 --> 01:28:41,880
you bring that bacteria or that fungus here and it

1520
01:28:42,079 --> 01:28:47,560
just runs wild. Hmm, Well, so you've.

1521
01:28:47,600 --> 01:28:50,039
Speaker 2: Something else I wanted to mention is that we're working

1522
01:28:50,159 --> 01:28:54,359
with the two other American chests on species, the Ozark

1523
01:28:54,479 --> 01:28:58,479
chinkapin and the Allegheny chinkapin. I guess there's one other

1524
01:28:58,560 --> 01:28:59,960
species that we're not working.

1525
01:28:59,760 --> 01:29:04,319
Speaker 1: With, Alabamensis. Yes, there's an Alabama. Those have some resistance,

1526
01:29:04,399 --> 01:29:04,760
don't they.

1527
01:29:07,000 --> 01:29:11,319
Speaker 2: I'm not aware of that, but that I haven't looked

1528
01:29:11,319 --> 01:29:15,680
into that. They they've done testing on those for blight resistance. Yeah,

1529
01:29:16,600 --> 01:29:18,399
for which one, the Alabama mensis?

1530
01:29:18,720 --> 01:29:20,920
Speaker 1: For any of them, they're they're all. I just know

1531
01:29:21,079 --> 01:29:27,199
Ozark Kansas is not as endangered as as Dentata. And

1532
01:29:27,600 --> 01:29:30,880
there's another one I saw in Florida, what a pumula

1533
01:29:31,560 --> 01:29:33,359
is not as endangered. Do you know? Do you know

1534
01:29:33,439 --> 01:29:35,439
why that might be? And is that is that even true?

1535
01:29:36,399 --> 01:29:40,520
Speaker 2: Yeah? So with Pumola, the Allegheny chinkapin, it's got quite

1536
01:29:40,520 --> 01:29:43,760
a bit of a different growth habit than the American chestnut.

1537
01:29:44,199 --> 01:29:47,800
American chess note has just one single stem. It grows

1538
01:29:47,880 --> 01:29:51,239
in like a timber type tree, whereas the Alleghany chinkapin

1539
01:29:51,399 --> 01:29:54,960
is like a shrub, a multi stem shrub. So if

1540
01:29:55,000 --> 01:29:58,000
it gets infected one of its branches and it loses

1541
01:29:58,079 --> 01:30:00,399
it to blight, it can be easily caught and saated

1542
01:30:00,439 --> 01:30:02,159
for because it's already a shrub, so it can just

1543
01:30:02,239 --> 01:30:03,880
send up more shoots.

1544
01:30:04,079 --> 01:30:08,079
Speaker 1: So that flowers earlier too and produces. Yeah.

1545
01:30:08,760 --> 01:30:11,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's much shorter, so it's less of an

1546
01:30:11,520 --> 01:30:15,840
issue there. But the ozark chincapin is, uh, just like

1547
01:30:15,920 --> 01:30:19,600
the American chess. It has like the greet the timber

1548
01:30:19,680 --> 01:30:23,760
type growth with this single stem. So it was pretty

1549
01:30:23,800 --> 01:30:27,880
devastated when blade came through. And it is very limited

1550
01:30:27,960 --> 01:30:30,800
in its range. So we've begun working with the ozark

1551
01:30:30,880 --> 01:30:33,960
chinkapin to increase resistance in that tree as well.

1552
01:30:34,119 --> 01:30:35,800
Speaker 1: Where does that Where does that occur.

1553
01:30:37,079 --> 01:30:41,760
Speaker 2: The ozark chinkapin. Yeah, yeah, it's in the Ozark Mountains

1554
01:30:41,800 --> 01:30:46,439
in like Arkansas, and it's it's a very limited range.

1555
01:30:47,159 --> 01:30:50,079
I think Mississippi. It goes into a little bit in Missouri.

1556
01:30:51,439 --> 01:30:54,479
Speaker 1: Diverged from data probably last few million years.

1557
01:30:54,640 --> 01:30:59,840
Speaker 2: I would assume, yeah, that it's unclear. I remember reading

1558
01:31:00,119 --> 01:31:05,800
a paper about that, and there's the the genomics are

1559
01:31:05,960 --> 01:31:09,119
kind of strange because they were unsure how much hybridization

1560
01:31:09,359 --> 01:31:15,039
had occurred, and uh, when when that diversions occurred, whether

1561
01:31:15,560 --> 01:31:18,600
because they're very different with their their nut morphology, that

1562
01:31:18,720 --> 01:31:22,720
chinkpin has just like that single nut, whereas the Dentata

1563
01:31:22,840 --> 01:31:26,359
has the three nuts per bur and you see that

1564
01:31:26,479 --> 01:31:30,319
in Asian species too. There's the chinkapin there that have

1565
01:31:30,439 --> 01:31:34,680
like a single nut, and the Chinese shots sound has

1566
01:31:34,760 --> 01:31:37,640
the three nuts. So it's unclear to me when that

1567
01:31:37,840 --> 01:31:40,960
diversions happened, if they came here at the same time,

1568
01:31:41,199 --> 01:31:43,680
or if they came as a single species and split.

1569
01:31:44,920 --> 01:31:47,319
It's kind of an interesting question. Yeah, I don't think

1570
01:31:47,560 --> 01:31:48,720
the definitive answer to.

1571
01:31:48,840 --> 01:31:51,880
Speaker 1: Yet producing one nut per burr. I'd assume that you

1572
01:31:51,960 --> 01:31:55,720
could just produce more more burrs then, and it's maybe

1573
01:31:55,760 --> 01:31:57,880
it's cost saving on that, you know, in terms of

1574
01:31:58,520 --> 01:32:03,239
energy for the tree and probably faster, I would assume.

1575
01:32:03,279 --> 01:32:04,720
I don't know, I don't know. I don't know what

1576
01:32:04,760 --> 01:32:07,720
the adaptive benefits, if any there would be, you know,

1577
01:32:08,159 --> 01:32:12,800
in seed size or seed number to fruit. But it's

1578
01:32:12,840 --> 01:32:15,520
interesting stuff to think about. How big does the the

1579
01:32:15,800 --> 01:32:17,119
ozark chikapin.

1580
01:32:16,760 --> 01:32:20,720
Speaker 2: Get it's quite a bit shorter than the American chests.

1581
01:32:20,760 --> 01:32:23,840
Not I'm not actually sure what the maximum height is.

1582
01:32:24,000 --> 01:32:27,319
I would say maybe like sixty feet sounds about right,

1583
01:32:28,119 --> 01:32:31,000
so it's still a decent sized tree, but it's not

1584
01:32:31,319 --> 01:32:33,079
massive like the American chess.

1585
01:32:33,479 --> 01:32:35,600
Speaker 1: How big were some of the American chestnuts, because those

1586
01:32:35,640 --> 01:32:38,199
photos you find online they're huge. How tall can they get?

1587
01:32:40,119 --> 01:32:42,600
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what the max is, but I know

1588
01:32:42,720 --> 01:32:45,439
the tallest one right now is one hundred and fifteen feet,

1589
01:32:45,560 --> 01:32:47,239
so at least at large.

1590
01:32:47,319 --> 01:32:49,960
Speaker 1: Probably one hundred so it's safe to assume probably one

1591
01:32:50,039 --> 01:32:51,840
hundred and forty hundred and fifty feet on some of

1592
01:32:51,880 --> 01:32:54,359
those old growth ones that can probably lick. Because I

1593
01:32:54,359 --> 01:32:57,640
wonder those trees in those photos they're I mean they're

1594
01:32:57,680 --> 01:33:01,039
six feet diameter, breast tight, they're fucking huge. They must

1595
01:33:01,119 --> 01:33:04,119
have been massive. I wonder how long they can live?

1596
01:33:04,199 --> 01:33:06,920
How long? How what's the most East Coast oaks? How

1597
01:33:06,960 --> 01:33:10,119
long can they live? You know, five six centuries or something.

1598
01:33:11,000 --> 01:33:15,039
Speaker 2: I know that the European chestnuts. There's European chestnuts that

1599
01:33:15,119 --> 01:33:17,479
are like over a thousand years old over there, so

1600
01:33:17,840 --> 01:33:18,520
I would.

1601
01:33:18,479 --> 01:33:22,439
Speaker 1: Reliably dated, not just estimated, but have been stem board

1602
01:33:22,560 --> 01:33:23,800
like tree ring counted or what.

1603
01:33:24,720 --> 01:33:28,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and uh, there's I believe it's in Sardinia.

1604
01:33:28,920 --> 01:33:32,680
They have these very old chess on farms and that

1605
01:33:32,760 --> 01:33:34,520
you know, they're growing trees there that are over eight

1606
01:33:34,640 --> 01:33:35,359
hundred years old.

1607
01:33:35,520 --> 01:33:37,239
Speaker 1: We're Sardinia. Is that in Italy?

1608
01:33:38,359 --> 01:33:40,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in the Mediterranean. It's an island.

1609
01:33:41,760 --> 01:33:42,720
Speaker 1: You ever want to go there?

1610
01:33:43,680 --> 01:33:46,119
Speaker 2: Oh, I would love to go there. Yeah, that'd be great.

1611
01:33:46,159 --> 01:33:47,800
Speaker 1: I'm going to go there sometime. I want to see

1612
01:33:47,800 --> 01:33:50,680
if my if my fucking you know, because I'm not

1613
01:33:50,800 --> 01:33:53,600
making any any you know, claims that I wonder if

1614
01:33:53,640 --> 01:33:57,079
the you know, my fucking I just want something to

1615
01:33:57,119 --> 01:34:00,319
blame my psychological flows on. They're they're not flashing laws

1616
01:34:00,359 --> 01:34:03,720
I exploit. But I've heard I've heard a lot of these,

1617
01:34:04,359 --> 01:34:06,800
you know, behavioral traits that I exhibit might be a

1618
01:34:06,880 --> 01:34:12,079
result of ancestry. So I wonder, you know, reckless driving, uh,

1619
01:34:12,720 --> 01:34:18,600
you know, wild gesticulations, fucking loudness, neurosis, but you know,

1620
01:34:18,720 --> 01:34:22,439
sometimes over sensitivity. I wonder if those anyway, I'd love

1621
01:34:22,520 --> 01:34:22,920
to go there.

1622
01:34:22,800 --> 01:34:25,800
Speaker 2: Anyway on your Italian ancestry, right, yeah.

1623
01:34:25,680 --> 01:34:28,479
Speaker 1: Okay, well listen, sorry, we were talking about Sardinia, I

1624
01:34:28,920 --> 01:34:29,640
distracted us.

1625
01:34:31,319 --> 01:34:34,039
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they've got and I believe it's Sardinia. It's

1626
01:34:34,039 --> 01:34:36,439
one of those Mediterranean islands. And they've got this old

1627
01:34:36,520 --> 01:34:41,960
culture of chestnut agriculture there, and they've got these massive

1628
01:34:42,560 --> 01:34:46,399
old European chestnut trees there that produce you know, tons

1629
01:34:46,399 --> 01:34:48,600
of nuts every year. So and they've been lying on

1630
01:34:48,680 --> 01:34:49,439
those for centuries.

1631
01:34:49,560 --> 01:34:51,640
Speaker 1: How do they not get the blight? Because it's dry there?

1632
01:34:51,680 --> 01:34:52,479
Because it's dry.

1633
01:34:52,399 --> 01:34:57,000
Speaker 2: Air, yeah, and they might have never had an introduction.

1634
01:34:57,920 --> 01:35:01,199
Speaker 1: Do you think I mean arid climate where you have

1635
01:35:01,279 --> 01:35:03,800
arid summers probably helps a lot, right, because for the

1636
01:35:03,920 --> 01:35:09,279
fungus to produce spores, it's ever to produce the ascocarps,

1637
01:35:09,319 --> 01:35:12,800
it's gotta the little mushrooms, it's gotta you have to

1638
01:35:12,840 --> 01:35:15,359
have a reasonable amount of humidity. Or does the humidity

1639
01:35:15,359 --> 01:35:17,399
help it travel? Do you any you know anything about

1640
01:35:17,439 --> 01:35:21,239
that effects of aridity on on the ability to spread

1641
01:35:21,479 --> 01:35:22,399
of this fungus.

1642
01:35:24,039 --> 01:35:27,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is kind of why they're able to grow

1643
01:35:27,760 --> 01:35:30,119
well on the West coast. We believe is because the

1644
01:35:30,960 --> 01:35:38,079
the dry air is not as conducive to the spores traveling.

1645
01:35:39,159 --> 01:35:43,079
The knidia spores that the asexual spores are need to

1646
01:35:43,159 --> 01:35:47,199
be moist otherwise they will die, and so I think

1647
01:35:47,479 --> 01:35:49,439
that prevents a lot of its spreading.

1648
01:35:49,680 --> 01:35:52,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's I mean it's you rarely get warmth

1649
01:35:52,880 --> 01:35:55,560
and humidity on the West coast. I'm talking about like

1650
01:35:55,600 --> 01:35:58,199
significant well like not like summer humidity like you get

1651
01:35:58,199 --> 01:36:00,520
on the east, and so you put those little mushrooms

1652
01:36:00,520 --> 01:36:04,199
out there and they just fucking they're going to have

1653
01:36:04,279 --> 01:36:07,479
a hard time surviving when the air is just pulling

1654
01:36:07,560 --> 01:36:08,479
moisture out of them.

1655
01:36:09,680 --> 01:36:12,600
Speaker 2: Right, So maybe that has something to do. And you

1656
01:36:12,640 --> 01:36:15,039
know what, it wasn't Serginia. It was Corsica, That's what.

1657
01:36:15,479 --> 01:36:17,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, where's Corsca? Is that in Italy?

1658
01:36:18,439 --> 01:36:20,439
Speaker 2: It's in the French Mediterranean.

1659
01:36:20,479 --> 01:36:23,760
Speaker 1: I think you said, never been over the Mediterranean. The

1660
01:36:23,840 --> 01:36:27,760
Mediterranean lifestyle should be over to just eating olives and

1661
01:36:27,880 --> 01:36:31,600
sucking on tubes olive oil. And they make this tomato

1662
01:36:31,680 --> 01:36:33,239
paste now in a tube. You can get it at

1663
01:36:33,279 --> 01:36:36,039
Trader Joe's. You got a Trader Joe's and Syracuse.

1664
01:36:37,239 --> 01:36:37,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do.

1665
01:36:38,159 --> 01:36:39,720
Speaker 1: Fuck, I wish we had that out here. I have

1666
01:36:39,760 --> 01:36:42,319
to go to like San Antonio to get it. But

1667
01:36:42,600 --> 01:36:45,239
I'm telling you, man, that tube tomato paste. You know,

1668
01:36:45,319 --> 01:36:47,640
it's like a little snack it it'll change your life.

1669
01:36:48,840 --> 01:36:52,279
So there's groves of this stuff in Corsica of Castania.

1670
01:36:52,359 --> 01:36:57,079
Speaker 2: Sativa, yes, very old trees, and they have a whole

1671
01:36:57,159 --> 01:36:59,800
culture there. You know, they've got their their mills and stuff.

1672
01:37:01,520 --> 01:37:03,840
In the fall. During harvest time, they're making lots of

1673
01:37:03,960 --> 01:37:07,600
chestnut beer and chestnut bread and chestnut desserts and all

1674
01:37:07,640 --> 01:37:08,079
that stuff.

1675
01:37:08,159 --> 01:37:11,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're delicious pigs. There was a tree in a

1676
01:37:12,680 --> 01:37:15,079
there was a tree in Mount Shasta and I used

1677
01:37:15,119 --> 01:37:17,520
to I'd be up there, you know for work sometimes

1678
01:37:17,560 --> 01:37:19,640
when I worked for the railroad, and there was a

1679
01:37:19,720 --> 01:37:22,760
tree in two trees in someone's yard of Mount Shasta,

1680
01:37:22,840 --> 01:37:25,600
and they would let me come get trees out of

1681
01:37:25,640 --> 01:37:28,640
their backyard and or not get trees, get seeds out

1682
01:37:28,640 --> 01:37:30,279
of their backyard because they would just fall and they

1683
01:37:30,319 --> 01:37:33,479
didn't want them. And so I would get like bushels

1684
01:37:33,520 --> 01:37:35,960
of these fucking and it was casting a stativa. I'm

1685
01:37:35,960 --> 01:37:38,840
pretty sure not Melissa, and I would just get bushels

1686
01:37:38,880 --> 01:37:41,680
of these these nuts. Was they were fucking delicious. And

1687
01:37:41,680 --> 01:37:43,319
you stick a fork in and put them in the oven,

1688
01:37:43,560 --> 01:37:47,079
spraying with some olive oil and then just crack them open.

1689
01:37:47,119 --> 01:37:48,800
And snack. God, they were still good, man.

1690
01:37:50,079 --> 01:37:51,439
Speaker 2: I love roasted chestnuts.

1691
01:37:51,920 --> 01:37:56,439
Speaker 1: Are there are there any groves of Melissima in New

1692
01:37:56,560 --> 01:37:58,079
York that you know of? A on the East Coast?

1693
01:37:58,119 --> 01:38:00,880
I mean, because I would I presume they can grow

1694
01:38:00,920 --> 01:38:03,199
those fine out there. Huh. Yeah.

1695
01:38:03,319 --> 01:38:07,920
Speaker 2: Actually, there is a an up and coming chestnut industry

1696
01:38:08,079 --> 01:38:12,039
that's starting on the East Coast, and those are mostly

1697
01:38:12,720 --> 01:38:18,000
Chinese seedling trees. There's this program at the University of

1698
01:38:18,720 --> 01:38:22,560
I believe it's Missouri called HARK and They've got these

1699
01:38:23,600 --> 01:38:29,239
very well tuned cultivars of Chinese and hybrids that they breed.

1700
01:38:29,520 --> 01:38:31,880
They breed together, and then they send those seeds out

1701
01:38:32,319 --> 01:38:36,359
to people to plant orchards with. And so these newer

1702
01:38:36,479 --> 01:38:40,520
orchards that are coming online are mostly Melissima seedling trees.

1703
01:38:41,079 --> 01:38:43,279
Speaker 1: And how are How are the Chinese chests taste? They're

1704
01:38:43,279 --> 01:38:45,239
still pretty good? Yeah.

1705
01:38:45,359 --> 01:38:49,560
Speaker 2: I actually like the Chinese chestnuts the best of all

1706
01:38:49,640 --> 01:38:52,640
the nuts I've tasted. I think Chinese. The Chinese ones

1707
01:38:52,680 --> 01:38:53,439
I've had are the best.

1708
01:38:53,600 --> 01:38:56,039
Speaker 1: What doesta taste like? Are they good?

1709
01:38:57,039 --> 01:38:59,840
Speaker 2: Yeah? They're good. The main issue with them is others

1710
01:39:00,159 --> 01:39:01,800
was small, so you have to do a lot of

1711
01:39:01,880 --> 01:39:04,359
work to get a little bit of food out of them.

1712
01:39:04,760 --> 01:39:07,079
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again we're not far who cares about, you know,

1713
01:39:07,159 --> 01:39:11,239
anthropocentric use. We're carried, but we're concerned about restoring the ecosystem.

1714
01:39:11,319 --> 01:39:14,800
And also I'm sure if you know, people would appreciate

1715
01:39:14,880 --> 01:39:18,079
the lumber at some point too. Chestnut lumbers is supposed

1716
01:39:18,079 --> 01:39:18,800
to be fucking great.

1717
01:39:19,960 --> 01:39:22,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely preferable for wildlife to have those little nuts,

1718
01:39:23,199 --> 01:39:26,319
so the blue jays, you know, can park their crops

1719
01:39:26,399 --> 01:39:31,439
full of those little nuts, and all the other smaller creters.

1720
01:39:31,479 --> 01:39:33,960
I think they prefer the smaller nut size versus the

1721
01:39:34,439 --> 01:39:36,520
you know, the giant things that come off of Chinese

1722
01:39:36,600 --> 01:39:38,119
chestnuts and Japanese chestnuts.

1723
01:39:38,239 --> 01:39:39,880
Speaker 1: But the wood, though, I mean, if you were trying

1724
01:39:39,920 --> 01:39:42,079
to do like a like a couple of acre lumber

1725
01:39:42,199 --> 01:39:44,359
plantation not my favorite thing in the world, but it's

1726
01:39:44,399 --> 01:39:47,439
got to happen occasionally, and you would want to plant.

1727
01:39:47,479 --> 01:39:50,359
I mean, chestnut wood is it's mostly for ornamental use.

1728
01:39:50,399 --> 01:39:52,279
It's not really great for building or is it good

1729
01:39:52,279 --> 01:39:54,239
for building? Do anything about the actual wood.

1730
01:39:55,960 --> 01:39:57,800
Speaker 2: Well, one of the best properties of it is that

1731
01:39:57,960 --> 01:40:01,079
it's really wrought resistant. What they would use it for

1732
01:40:01,439 --> 01:40:05,079
is stuff for outdoor exposures, so they would use it

1733
01:40:05,159 --> 01:40:09,319
for like barns or like fence posts or telephone polls,

1734
01:40:09,399 --> 01:40:12,760
stuff like that, because it's really route resistant and learn't

1735
01:40:12,760 --> 01:40:14,319
have to treat it with chemicals, so it.

1736
01:40:14,279 --> 01:40:16,319
Speaker 1: Would be like a like an East Coast equivalent of

1737
01:40:16,399 --> 01:40:22,840
red seeds. And yeah, damn well, Eric, I want to

1738
01:40:22,880 --> 01:40:26,560
thank you for coming on again and for explaining all

1739
01:40:26,600 --> 01:40:30,039
of this, and I'm really happy that it's still it's

1740
01:40:30,039 --> 01:40:32,920
still happening. I'm really happy to I mean, what are

1741
01:40:32,960 --> 01:40:35,640
we looking at in terms of time when these can,

1742
01:40:36,640 --> 01:40:40,079
you know, be introduced to the ecosystem again, or when

1743
01:40:40,159 --> 01:40:44,039
they can especially be available to the public, these transgendic

1744
01:40:44,119 --> 01:40:45,039
American chestnuts.

1745
01:40:47,159 --> 01:40:50,520
Speaker 2: We're hoping pretty soon. We would have thought it would

1746
01:40:50,640 --> 01:40:54,880
be done already, but there's been few delays along the way.

1747
01:40:55,520 --> 01:40:58,399
And the current delay right now is that there is

1748
01:40:58,960 --> 01:41:03,279
a change of administration and so all the those agencies

1749
01:41:03,319 --> 01:41:07,439
are going through like a shuffling of employees and stuff

1750
01:41:07,479 --> 01:41:10,840
like that, which which always happens during changes of administration.

1751
01:41:11,000 --> 01:41:14,119
So that will probably delay things a little bit. But

1752
01:41:15,319 --> 01:41:17,520
we're towards the end of the process. We've done all

1753
01:41:17,560 --> 01:41:20,560
the paperwork and all that stuff, so we're we're hoping

1754
01:41:20,640 --> 01:41:22,239
within the next you know, year or two.

1755
01:41:22,640 --> 01:41:25,520
Speaker 1: But you guys are regulated. This is going to be

1756
01:41:25,640 --> 01:41:27,840
regulated by what federal agencies.

1757
01:41:28,600 --> 01:41:32,199
Speaker 2: By the USDA, the e p A, and the FDA.

1758
01:41:32,600 --> 01:41:34,800
Speaker 1: Oh well, the e p A and the FDA might

1759
01:41:34,880 --> 01:41:37,239
not even exist in you know, a year, So I

1760
01:41:37,279 --> 01:41:42,920
guess there's that going for you, right, four years of

1761
01:41:43,000 --> 01:41:47,720
fucking chaos. Man. I'm I'm just like God, I don't care.

1762
01:41:47,720 --> 01:41:50,359
You know, I don't get into politics people have. I

1763
01:41:50,399 --> 01:41:52,439
don't need people to fucking agree with me one hundred percent.

1764
01:41:52,520 --> 01:41:54,439
I don't care people get duped.

1765
01:41:54,960 --> 01:41:55,119
Speaker 2: You know.

1766
01:41:55,279 --> 01:41:58,359
Speaker 1: The fucking American left has its own share of wacos,

1767
01:41:58,800 --> 01:42:01,520
of which I've certainly exposed, especially when I live in

1768
01:42:01,560 --> 01:42:05,239
the bear. I just fucking like the mean girl syndrome too,

1769
01:42:05,520 --> 01:42:08,680
just fucking but but still, I mean, it's just the

1770
01:42:08,800 --> 01:42:13,000
fucking chaos. It's going to ensue chaos and incompetence and whatever.

1771
01:42:13,199 --> 01:42:16,520
Speaker 2: You know, I've learned it's really hard to predict what

1772
01:42:16,600 --> 01:42:19,399
they're going to do. They'll We've been given all kinds

1773
01:42:19,399 --> 01:42:22,560
of timelines of when to expect things to happen, and

1774
01:42:22,640 --> 01:42:25,800
it's pretty rare when those timelines are adhered to. So

1775
01:42:26,920 --> 01:42:29,920
it's hard because people will ask when this is going

1776
01:42:30,000 --> 01:42:32,520
to happen, and I want to give a definitive answer,

1777
01:42:32,560 --> 01:42:34,760
but it's just really hard for any of us to

1778
01:42:34,920 --> 01:42:37,359
know what to expect because it's it's really out of

1779
01:42:37,439 --> 01:42:37,960
our hands.

1780
01:42:38,079 --> 01:42:41,840
Speaker 1: I mean, but literally, the EPA might not exist, might

1781
01:42:42,000 --> 01:42:47,000
not exist. But dude, he's got RFK, he's got RFK.

1782
01:42:47,159 --> 01:42:51,000
Don't worry. What is So you're thinking three or four years?

1783
01:42:51,279 --> 01:42:54,640
Maybe if you think it will take longer than that,

1784
01:42:54,840 --> 01:42:56,960
what estimate? Just throw it out there and no one's

1785
01:42:56,960 --> 01:42:59,079
going to hold you to it. No one's gonna put

1786
01:42:59,119 --> 01:43:00,239
your feet in the fire if you're wrong.

1787
01:43:00,279 --> 01:43:03,359
Speaker 2: What do you think, Well, I would say probably closer

1788
01:43:03,439 --> 01:43:05,760
to one to two because we're at the end of

1789
01:43:05,840 --> 01:43:09,159
the process. We actually submitted our paperwork in twenty twenty,

1790
01:43:09,680 --> 01:43:12,279
so it's been a full four years already and it's

1791
01:43:12,359 --> 01:43:15,680
gone through most of the processes it needs to go through.

1792
01:43:15,760 --> 01:43:18,239
So we're at the end. The question is how long

1793
01:43:18,319 --> 01:43:20,359
is it going to take for like these final steps.

1794
01:43:20,920 --> 01:43:27,039
Hopefully it shouldn't be too much longer. I'm mostly optimistic,

1795
01:43:27,880 --> 01:43:30,199
but it's like I said, it's just really hard to

1796
01:43:30,279 --> 01:43:31,439
predict what comes next.

1797
01:43:31,840 --> 01:43:35,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean I guess once it's out, then

1798
01:43:35,319 --> 01:43:38,239
it's out. And then you can get people like backyard propagators,

1799
01:43:39,079 --> 01:43:41,479
you know, buying a bunch of these and trying to

1800
01:43:41,560 --> 01:43:44,319
do their you know, basically start their own chess American

1801
01:43:44,439 --> 01:43:49,119
chestnut orchards. Yeah, and potentially doing more work. I mean,

1802
01:43:49,159 --> 01:43:51,039
then it's kind of then it's out there. Once the

1803
01:43:51,119 --> 01:43:54,039
cat's out the bag, then it's fucking I mean, that's

1804
01:43:54,119 --> 01:43:56,960
kind of what I hope happens, because there's some there's

1805
01:43:57,000 --> 01:43:59,840
some amazing people just doing crazy shit in their back

1806
01:44:00,079 --> 01:44:03,199
are that it's pretty cool. I mean someone you might

1807
01:44:03,239 --> 01:44:07,199
get someone like who's retired as you know, stable income

1808
01:44:07,279 --> 01:44:09,680
and is like, I'm just going to fucking breathe thousands

1809
01:44:09,760 --> 01:44:11,279
of these things now, you know.

1810
01:44:11,399 --> 01:44:14,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I'm really excited about that. And there's there

1811
01:44:14,119 --> 01:44:16,119
are people who have been waiting a long time for

1812
01:44:16,239 --> 01:44:19,560
these trees and are very enthusiastic about doing what you

1813
01:44:19,720 --> 01:44:22,439
just said. So that's kind of something I'm the most

1814
01:44:22,479 --> 01:44:25,319
excited about, is getting the trees into those people's hands,

1815
01:44:25,359 --> 01:44:28,119
so you know, they can start going to town with

1816
01:44:28,239 --> 01:44:28,800
these trees.

1817
01:44:29,079 --> 01:44:32,279
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, what is going on with the back cross breeding?

1818
01:44:32,800 --> 01:44:33,840
I guess we should mention that.

1819
01:44:35,560 --> 01:44:39,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, their organization, they've done kind of like a change

1820
01:44:39,560 --> 01:44:45,119
in strategy. They've been approaching back cross breeding from trying

1821
01:44:45,199 --> 01:44:49,079
to get trees that are just like minimally Chinese and

1822
01:44:49,199 --> 01:44:52,039
like mostly American. They were going for a fraction. They

1823
01:44:52,079 --> 01:44:56,760
were going for like fifteenth sixteenth American and then like

1824
01:44:56,920 --> 01:45:00,640
one sixteenth Chinese genetics. But that was before or they

1825
01:45:01,359 --> 01:45:05,920
made their discovery that all these genes are on all

1826
01:45:06,000 --> 01:45:09,000
the different chromosomes of the Chinese russ on. So they've

1827
01:45:09,039 --> 01:45:13,159
readjusted their strategy a bit so that they're breeding for

1828
01:45:13,399 --> 01:45:17,319
higher levels of Chinese genetics so they can get more

1829
01:45:18,680 --> 01:45:21,720
Morval's resistance alleles in their hybrid population.

1830
01:45:21,880 --> 01:45:24,960
Speaker 1: Because it's not just one it's not just one genetic

1831
01:45:25,000 --> 01:45:27,039
low side. It's not just one location on the genome.

1832
01:45:27,079 --> 01:45:28,840
It's how many dozens, hundreds?

1833
01:45:28,880 --> 01:45:35,039
Speaker 2: What? Yeah, there's losai on every chromosome with unknown numbers

1834
01:45:35,079 --> 01:45:36,840
of genes at each low side, so it could be

1835
01:45:36,920 --> 01:45:38,000
as much as thousands.

1836
01:45:38,439 --> 01:45:41,880
Speaker 1: Jesus christ Man. That's that's good luck with that that's

1837
01:45:41,920 --> 01:45:44,640
going to take for that's like that. It really is

1838
01:45:44,720 --> 01:45:47,640
like the monkey and the typewriter analogy, just hoping that

1839
01:45:47,720 --> 01:45:51,960
you end up. I mean, it's I don't know, but

1840
01:45:52,039 --> 01:45:54,039
they're still I mean, they're still doing it. It's better

1841
01:45:54,119 --> 01:45:56,279
than nothing, but it was there was the method that

1842
01:45:56,359 --> 01:45:59,840
existed before we had genetic modification.

1843
01:46:00,880 --> 01:46:03,399
Speaker 2: I I don't think that any one method is going

1844
01:46:03,479 --> 01:46:06,760
to be the solution. So I think that obviously I

1845
01:46:06,840 --> 01:46:08,960
believe in what we're doing, but I think that it's

1846
01:46:09,039 --> 01:46:13,760
gonna take a combination of breeding and genetic engineering and

1847
01:46:13,840 --> 01:46:16,319
then maybe some of that biocontrol we were talking about

1848
01:46:16,359 --> 01:46:20,199
with the super donor restrains. It's gonna it's gonna take

1849
01:46:20,359 --> 01:46:23,279
a combination approach to be able to get to the

1850
01:46:23,439 --> 01:46:25,199
restoration goal that we're all shooting for.

1851
01:46:25,439 --> 01:46:28,640
Speaker 1: Do you know what's up with are they are they

1852
01:46:28,800 --> 01:46:31,159
like mapping the genomes? Are they mapping what they're doing?

1853
01:46:31,319 --> 01:46:31,359
Speaker 2: Like?

1854
01:46:31,479 --> 01:46:33,680
Speaker 1: Is there any way for them to have oversight over

1855
01:46:33,840 --> 01:46:37,359
what different phenotypes they're creating, Like where they can actually

1856
01:46:37,399 --> 01:46:39,560
map the genome and see, oh okay, I see when

1857
01:46:39,600 --> 01:46:44,239
we move this pollen to this overary. Uh this this happened,

1858
01:46:44,279 --> 01:46:47,840
We created this phenotype that's got these genes and et cetera.

1859
01:46:48,920 --> 01:46:52,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually exactly what they're doing. They're doing genomics

1860
01:46:52,399 --> 01:46:57,319
based selection, so they they look at the the genotypes

1861
01:46:57,359 --> 01:47:01,000
of their best trees, and so they can see where

1862
01:47:01,119 --> 01:47:05,039
these low sie are and then when they do their

1863
01:47:05,119 --> 01:47:08,319
next generations of breeding, they can go and do genotyping

1864
01:47:08,399 --> 01:47:11,319
on their offspring and do a little bit of selection

1865
01:47:12,119 --> 01:47:17,840
based just on the genomics versus you know, stem inoculation assets.

1866
01:47:17,880 --> 01:47:20,439
So they're doing like pre screening using genetics.

1867
01:47:21,560 --> 01:47:26,079
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I remember I visited one of their fields

1868
01:47:26,159 --> 01:47:29,279
in College Station. No it wasn't college Station, what is it,

1869
01:47:29,319 --> 01:47:31,159
pennsyl Is it college Station, Pennsylvania?

1870
01:47:31,319 --> 01:47:31,520
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1871
01:47:31,720 --> 01:47:35,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I remember, God, the fucking field was loaded

1872
01:47:35,399 --> 01:47:38,119
with ticks. That was my first experience with East Coast tics.

1873
01:47:38,279 --> 01:47:41,560
God talk about the graded ecosystems. Got to bring fireback

1874
01:47:41,600 --> 01:47:46,319
to those those ecosystems. But but I remember going out

1875
01:47:46,359 --> 01:47:48,279
there and seeing, you know, they were inoculated all these

1876
01:47:48,319 --> 01:47:51,119
trees planted, They were inoculating them, testing them for blight resistance.

1877
01:47:51,199 --> 01:47:54,520
But now it seems like they may not even I mean,

1878
01:47:54,560 --> 01:47:56,000
they still need to do that, but that would be

1879
01:47:56,000 --> 01:47:58,640
a last step because now you can just look at

1880
01:47:58,680 --> 01:48:03,319
the genome of the chest and see what genes it's inherited,

1881
01:48:03,520 --> 01:48:06,039
and I mean you can you look at it. You

1882
01:48:06,119 --> 01:48:10,079
can probably look at a chestnut genome and see whether

1883
01:48:10,159 --> 01:48:14,079
it's whether that genome has light resistance or whether it's susceptible.

1884
01:48:14,159 --> 01:48:19,039
Speaker 2: Right, you can make predictions for sure by looking at

1885
01:48:20,039 --> 01:48:22,760
some of these low si and whether or not they've

1886
01:48:22,840 --> 01:48:26,479
been inherited. So you could look at a seedling that

1887
01:48:26,760 --> 01:48:30,359
has inherited you know, low si you know, one, two, three, whatever,

1888
01:48:30,880 --> 01:48:33,600
and say, okay, well there's probably a fifty percent chance

1889
01:48:33,680 --> 01:48:36,399
that this is going to have increased resistance because it's

1890
01:48:36,439 --> 01:48:39,439
inherited this. So that's that's the type of work that

1891
01:48:39,479 --> 01:48:40,479
they're developing right now.

1892
01:48:41,560 --> 01:48:43,760
Speaker 1: Okay, cool, So there is Yeah, you can make somewhat

1893
01:48:43,800 --> 01:48:47,159
accurate predictions. Well, I guess that's sums I guess that

1894
01:48:47,239 --> 01:48:49,239
sums it up. Man. Thanks again for coming on. And

1895
01:48:49,640 --> 01:48:52,000
I guess if you want to, you know, put anything

1896
01:48:52,039 --> 01:48:53,680
out there for people who are interested in your work

1897
01:48:53,720 --> 01:48:56,119
to read about or look up, and now's your chance.

1898
01:48:57,199 --> 01:49:01,760
Speaker 2: Sure. Our website is ESF dot E slash chestnut. We

1899
01:49:01,880 --> 01:49:05,640
do regular updates on there, including publishing some of our

1900
01:49:05,760 --> 01:49:10,880
data and other news around the project. If you're on Facebook,

1901
01:49:11,000 --> 01:49:14,520
we have a Facebook group called the American Chestnut Research

1902
01:49:14,560 --> 01:49:18,560
and Restoration Project, and if you join that group, we

1903
01:49:18,680 --> 01:49:22,279
have discussions about chestnuts, people post pictures of their treaties

1904
01:49:22,359 --> 01:49:26,520
and discuss topics around restoration, and we also post our

1905
01:49:26,600 --> 01:49:27,159
updates there.

1906
01:49:28,079 --> 01:49:30,600
Speaker 1: Okay, well, great man, thanks a lot, appreciate you coming

1907
01:49:30,640 --> 01:49:34,359
on and until next time, thanks a lot. Joy Okay,