Tree Huggers

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Genetic engineering was meant to save American chestnut trees. Then there was a mistake. (wapo.st)

submitted 2 years ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/treehuggers@slrpnk.net

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A potential labelling error was the latest in a series of concerns for the American Chestnut Foundation, driving the nonprofit to pull support for a genetically engineered tree meant resurrect an iconic American species.

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[–] marine_mustang@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ok, not so bad. There was work being done on trees that were thought to be Darling 58, but were actually Darling 54. So maybe that work will have to be redone on Darling 58 trees?

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

My understanding is that there were enough mistakes like that for the project funding to be cut

[–] marine_mustang@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah, and funding dictates the pace of work.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago

Was the funding cut? The ACF has stopped backing the project, but I think that was a political and organizational backing, not necessarily financial.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 years ago

I still believe this project will form the basis of the resurrection of this species, although it’s concerning that this wasn’t caught earlier. But we can see the defective version as a prototype—now that we understand the problem, it should not be too difficult to correct. However it may take further years to fully establish the safety of the new version.