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| Living Carbon researchers used a crude technique known as the gene gun method. (Photo by Audra Melton, The New York Times) |
A poem as lovely as a tree.
Poet and journalist Joyce Kilmer penned that in 1913. What would he have thought if he had looked out his window to see "a low-lying tract of southern Georgia’s Pine Belt where half-dozen workers were planting row upon row of twig-like poplar trees," some "genetically engineered to grow wood at turbocharged rates while slurping up carbon dioxide from the air," as Gabriel Popkin of The New York Times reports?
Made by God, but reingineered by humans: "The poplars may be the first genetically modified trees planted in the United States outside of a research trial or a commercial fruit orchard," Popkin writes "Just as the introduction of the Flavr Savr tomato in 1994 introduced a new industry of genetically modified food crops, the tree planters on Monday hope to transform forestry. Living Carbon, a San Francisco-based biotechnology company that produced the poplars, intends for its trees to be a large-scale solution to climate change."
“We’ve had people tell us it’s impossible,” Maddie Hall, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, told Popkin, who reports, "But she and her colleagues have also found believers — enough to invest $36 million . . . The company has also attracted critics. The Global Justice Ecology Project, an environmental group, has called the company’s trees 'growing threats' to forests and expressed alarm that the federal government allowed them to evade regulation. . . . Living Carbon has yet to publish peer-reviewed papers; its only publicly reported results come from a greenhouse trial that lasted just a few months."
Donald Ort, a University of Illinois geneticist whose plant experiments helped inspire Living Carbon’s technology, told Popkin, “They have some encouraging results," but he added that translation from greenhouse to the field is "not a slam dunk.”
Popkin explains: that the Georgia plantings used "the gene gun method, which essentially blasts foreign genes into the trees’ chromosomes. . . . In a field accustomed to glacial progress and heavy regulation, Living Carbon has moved fast and freely. The gene-gun-modified poplars avoided a set of federal regulations of genetically modified organisms that can stall biotech projects for years. (Those regulations have since been revised.) . . . On the land of Vince Stanley, a seventh-generation farmer who manages more than 25,000 forested acres in Georgia’s pine belt, mattock-swinging workers carrying backpacks of seedlings planted nearly 5,000 modified poplars."
Both the trees and Living Carbon will have survival challenges. "While outright destruction of genetically engineered trees has dwindled, the trees still prompt unease in the forestry and environmental worlds," Popkin reports. "Major organizations that certify sustainable forests ban engineered trees from forests that get their approval; some also prohibit member companies from planting engineered trees anywhere. To date, the only country where large numbers of genetically engineered trees are known to have been planted is China."
Ort "dismissed such environmental concerns. But he said investors were taking a big chance on a tree that might not meet its creators’ expectations," Popkin reports. Ort told him, “It’s not unexciting. I just think it’s uber-high risk."
Made by God, but reingineered by humans: "The poplars may be the first genetically modified trees planted in the United States outside of a research trial or a commercial fruit orchard," Popkin writes "Just as the introduction of the Flavr Savr tomato in 1994 introduced a new industry of genetically modified food crops, the tree planters on Monday hope to transform forestry. Living Carbon, a San Francisco-based biotechnology company that produced the poplars, intends for its trees to be a large-scale solution to climate change."
“We’ve had people tell us it’s impossible,” Maddie Hall, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, told Popkin, who reports, "But she and her colleagues have also found believers — enough to invest $36 million . . . The company has also attracted critics. The Global Justice Ecology Project, an environmental group, has called the company’s trees 'growing threats' to forests and expressed alarm that the federal government allowed them to evade regulation. . . . Living Carbon has yet to publish peer-reviewed papers; its only publicly reported results come from a greenhouse trial that lasted just a few months."
Donald Ort, a University of Illinois geneticist whose plant experiments helped inspire Living Carbon’s technology, told Popkin, “They have some encouraging results," but he added that translation from greenhouse to the field is "not a slam dunk.”
Popkin explains: that the Georgia plantings used "the gene gun method, which essentially blasts foreign genes into the trees’ chromosomes. . . . In a field accustomed to glacial progress and heavy regulation, Living Carbon has moved fast and freely. The gene-gun-modified poplars avoided a set of federal regulations of genetically modified organisms that can stall biotech projects for years. (Those regulations have since been revised.) . . . On the land of Vince Stanley, a seventh-generation farmer who manages more than 25,000 forested acres in Georgia’s pine belt, mattock-swinging workers carrying backpacks of seedlings planted nearly 5,000 modified poplars."
Both the trees and Living Carbon will have survival challenges. "While outright destruction of genetically engineered trees has dwindled, the trees still prompt unease in the forestry and environmental worlds," Popkin reports. "Major organizations that certify sustainable forests ban engineered trees from forests that get their approval; some also prohibit member companies from planting engineered trees anywhere. To date, the only country where large numbers of genetically engineered trees are known to have been planted is China."
Ort "dismissed such environmental concerns. But he said investors were taking a big chance on a tree that might not meet its creators’ expectations," Popkin reports. Ort told him, “It’s not unexciting. I just think it’s uber-high risk."
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