Talking Biotech Podcast 376 Releasing the Biotech Blight Resistant Chestnut Interview with Eric Carlson, State University of New York === [00:00:00] And Kevin Folta: welcome to today's talking Biotech podcast by Colabra and today we're going to revisit an old topic, a topic going back to episode maybe 10 in the Talking Biotech series. And I remember back in 2015 when that was weeks ahead in the future and was looking forward to it. And this is on the light resistant. American Chestnut, American chestnuts are an important keystone species and had a significant role in forest at one time, and we'll talk about what happened to that as well as a solution to potentially bring it back to its former prominence. So we're speaking with Eric Carlson. He's a PhD student at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. So welcome back to the podcast. Erik Carlson: Thanks for having me on again, Kevin. Kevin Folta: Yeah. And, and you were, I seemly remember an email where you mentioned that you used to listen to this podcast long before you had a actual career in biotechnology? Erik Carlson: Yeah, that's right. I was [00:01:00] scrubbing out a dishware in my undergrad research position, listening to talking biotech listening to the, actually the American Chestnut episode before I joined the lab. Okay. Kevin Folta: And, and the funny part there is that was with Jared West. Who was in a class I taught , I taught his Molest Molecular biology course. Right. Jared Westbrook. Westbrook. Yeah. Well, it's been a while. . . Yeah, it's been a while. Yeah. Probably about 15 years. But I guess he's doing great and uh, and so he was doing another approach to solve the same problem. But let, let's go back to the beginning of this and I, this is a super cool project. Let me start out by saying, the main reason I wanted to have you back on again is to kind of do a project update, but also because it's really important that anyone listening has an opportunity to take action now. There is a public comment period open on this technology, which is going to be [00:02:00] a, I'll ask you about that. I guess it's a formal release of this material and it stands to solve a very important problem in conservation and it's a really exciting solution. And I wanted to mention this early for folks who maybe are listening early to the podcast and would wouldn't catch this if we put it at the end. Listen today. The main goal of this is to help give you the information you need to write a very cogent response in that public comments section because we want not just the throwaway boiler played stuff, we want a well, very well thought out rationalized comment, and we'll give directions to where to do that at the end. So Eric, let's start out at the beginning. How dominant was the American chestnut in the Eastern Forest prior to say 19? Erik Carlson: So that's a really interesting question. There's actually been a little bit of controversy in that because. It's actually been a bit romanticized how prevalent it was. So [00:03:00] the going back sometime, people said that it was basically 25% of the entire forest was American chestnut. And that was definitely true in some places throughout the range. So the range of the American chestnut was from Georgia to Maine. Basically the, the entire east coast of, of North America. And there were some places where it was, could definitely be considered dominant. Some areas in like Pennsylvania and, and in the Carolinas. But you could also find it scattered throughout the entire range in, in different densities. And something that's actually really interesting with the history of the American chestnut in those areas where it was very dominant. Some people believe that may have to do with indigenous people. Forest management regimens where they would actually burn forest and select for American chestnuts and do other things too, like remove ticks and pests. But the American chestnut in some places became, you [00:04:00] know, almost pure stands. In some places it became half the population. But the bottom line is throughout the entire range, the American chestnut was. Kevin Folta: Okay. Yeah, and I always threw, use that 25% figure myself. I, I mention it all the time because it seems to be the good statistic to throw out there. So thank you for that. So this is a a tree species at le that was at least frequent along the eastern seaboard and in, in and around Appalachia. And a really, a keystone species with respect to how it would contribute to local ecology and the species that are there. What happened? That led to its decline. Erik Carlson: So in the 18 hundreds, people began importing Asian species of chestnut, including a Japanese chestnut, primarily Japanese chestnut. And when they brought those over, they inadvertently introduced a fungal pathogen called Ryenia paras. And in Asia, [00:05:00] this, this fungus kind of lives almost a commensal lifestyle with the, the chestnut species there that. Mostly resistant to it, but when it came to the United States and was introduced to the American Chestnut and its relatives that were naive to the pathogen, it quickly burned through the entire range and decimated the species. Yeah. So this is Kevin Folta: a, this was a pretty big deal because, and it went pretty fast, right? I mean, it was over the course of less than a decade. Erik Carlson: After its initial discovery in 1904, it had basically gone through the entire range by 1950. Kevin Folta: Okay. So it took a couple decades to get through there, but the entire range was decimated. It was a tree in the Bronx Zoo, I seem to remember. Is that more Erik Carlson: lore? Yes. That was when it was actually discovered and identified. So it was the, the trees in New York City began getting sick and a biologist. Named Merkel discovered these fungal infections and, and [00:06:00] named it and identified it, but it was probably introduced in the 1870s. Kevin Folta: Okay. So that, so it was just that it was in a place where somebody noticed it or where, where people had noticed it. They really brought it to attention so that, so it may have been around longer than we originally are, were told by, you know, the, by the lore around the, the zoo in a tree planted from China. You know, that that old. Erik Carlson: Right. Y Yeah, so it had already probably spread for some time before people realize it was a, was a real problem in, in something new. Kevin Folta: Okay. Well, tell me more about this pathogen. Is it so it's a fungus and you, you mentioned its name, but where did it come from and where does it reside Naturally? Erik Carlson: Yes, this is a fungus called Cry XR sica, or this common name is just the chestnut blight fungus, and it comes from Asia. And in Asia it lives mostly as a sapra trophic fungus, which means it kind of colonizes the [00:07:00] trees and waits for them to die and then consumes their dead tissue, like if they drop a branch or if the tree falls down, then it would consume it. In weakened trees or in non-resistant trees, it will actually go ahead and kill the tree and then consume it as opposed to waiting for it to die from, from other causes. I see. Kevin Folta: So I was always surprised to learn about this part of it. And you, yeah. Maybe correct me if I'm wrong, is that. This doesn't kill the tree, and that if you go into the forest, that there's a lot of the original American chestnut material that still is there, just really limping along, and that there may be root systems with suckers that are still there. This kind of thing that really do stand as a potential source of good wild genetics in the event that you could somehow overcome the Fung. Erik Carlson: Yeah, that's right. It's one of the real fortunate characteristics of the American chestnut is it has the ability to re-sprout from the [00:08:00] stump. So the fungus will kill the tree above the ground line, but it's not able to penetrate the soil and kill the roots because the, the natural soil microbiota outcompete the fungus, and so it can't really get in there. So the trees are able to re-sprout from the stump and send up. That continued to survive for a period of time before they two are reinfected and killed back down to the ground in kind of a repeating cycle. Kevin Folta: Okay. And you mentioned the role of this in Asia. There are species of chestnut that are resistant to this fungus, right? Erik Carlson: Yeah. The species from Asia, like Japanese chestnut Chinese chestnut, there's a few dwarf chestnut species called Seguin. And all of those have some level of resistance to Kevin Folta: blight. Okay? And so why not just use those to genetically improve the American chest, not just by crossing in that resistance gene.[00:09:00] Erik Carlson: Yeah, that would be great if we were, were able to do that and people have been pursuing that exact goal for decades now. And in theory if resistance was controlled by one, two, you know, three or four genes, that would be entirely possible. But the issue is that resistance in those Asian chestnut species is quantitative and it's controlled by many different genes. In fact, Doing genomic studies, we found that resistance loci are found on 12 out of 12 of the chestnut chromosomes. So, and with unknown numbers of genes at each loci. So it's controlled by many different genes, which makes it very difficult to breed for Kevin Folta: now. Also, the fact that it's a tree. How long do you have to wait before it flowers from. Erik Carlson: Normally in field conditions, it takes three to five years for male flowering, and then another maybe eight to 10 years for female flowering. And trees are monosh, so they have both male and [00:10:00] female parts. Okay? So Kevin Folta: you have to really have to wait for eight years to have female germplasm available for pollination. So every generation you do. You know, you're, you're, if you're a geneticist, you might get a couple generations in a lifetime to be able to study the resistance. Erik Carlson: Yeah. That's one of the things with working with trees is things take a very long time. Every generation is years. So yeah, progress can be slow. Kevin Folta: You're telling me I, I play with genetics and trees because I don't wanna have my life depend on it. , but it, it does take long and it's frustrating because that juvenility period can be so long. So let's talk about the genetics of. The solution. So you've been working with the team that has been working on Darling 58 for a number of years now, and what is the genetic tweak that was made to the American chestnut to give it resistance to this parasite?[00:11:00] Erik Carlson: A gene from wheat called oxalate oxidase was inserted into American chestnut embryos. And what oxalate oxidase does is detoxifies the main weapon of the blight fungus. The blight fungus secretes this strong organic acid called, called oxalic acid, or oxalate is another name for it. And what the OXO enzyme. Is it breaks that oxy acid down into carbon monoxide and hydrogen peroxide, which are not toxic to the tree. Kevin Folta: Yeah. The tree sorts those things out pretty easily. Right? Yeah. So, so, so this is basically an enzyme that comes from wheat. Yeah. Add to American chestnut that now makes it able to essentially disarm the fungus. So, do I have that right? So, Erik Carlson: Yep, that's right. Okay, Kevin Folta: cool. So we're talking to Eric Carlson. He's on the team that's working on the blight resistant fungus that currently is going through [00:12:00] the kind of the last phases of deregulation. And there's a public comment period where your comments are extremely welcome. The folks who hate this technology are there with boiler. Letters that have been supplied by different groups that don't like genetically engineered trees or technology in general and your voice giving a very cogent response that's evidence-based really will help the regulators. So this is Collaborates Talking Biotech podcast, and we'll be back in just a moment. And now we're back on collabs Talking Biotech podcast and we're speaking with Eric Carlson. He's a PhD student who's working on the the Blight Resistant Chestnut Project. And again, as I mentioned before, public common period is open and would like your words. And so if you could go to regulations.gov/document and slash afis A P H I S. Dash 2020. Dash [00:13:00] 0 0 3 0 dash 8 29. You can access the docket. I'll also include a much more convenient clickable link in the show notes of this particular episode, , but that'll be in the transcript as well. So if you need to find it, that's where it'll be. So let's go back to talking about the science. Before we go further, though, this work has. Place for a long time and folks have been working on this for a while. How long has that been And just to kind of give credit where credit is due, who conceived this plan and who has been overseeing the research so far? Erik Carlson: Yeah, so this project began back in 1990, so the founding members of the New York chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, that was Herb Darling and Stan Sig, they approached Dr. Bill Powell and Dr. Chuck Maynard at SUNY E S F. The school that I go to, and they wanted to ask them if they could use some of these new [00:14:00] modern molecular biology tools that were revolutionizing agricultural biotechnology and use those in American chestnut for this blight issue. People had been doing the breeding program for a long time at that point. They were interested in this new type of technology, and so they approached Dr. Powell and Dr. Maynard who were studying different types of tissue culture and genes at Sun ESF to see if they could maybe implement this type of technology. And that's when it all started. So from that initial point, it took another about 20 years to develop a tissue culture. Process and a transformation process and defined good candidate genes and then another 12 years to where we are now. So it was, it was about a little over 30 years now that the project has been in progress. Kevin Folta: Yeah. Maybe you could speak to this part a little bit too, is that usually people who are not real excited about genetic engineering are upset [00:15:00] because it gets cause it's used around food, right? It's used to modify the crop plants that generate the food we eat. So what has the reception been like to the idea of doing something that would favor an ecological? Conservation effort. And has it, has it received as much pushback as some of these other issues in genetic engineering? Erik Carlson: Well, it's a really interesting topic to talk about the controversy behind it because our pro, our project really challenges a lot of the preconceived notions that people have about genetic engineering. A lot of people tie up genetic engineering. Big agrichemical companies and with the use of pesticides and use of pla plant patents and things like that. And none of those are really relevant to, to our project. We're, we're not doing any of those things. And so It's almost like a, a confused reaction. You know, some, some people are really for it and people that would be [00:16:00] normally against things like GE crops a lot of times are for it. And and then there's still the people that are a little bit skeptical about the use of this technology and want to not see it implemented for chestnut ReSTOR. Kevin Folta: Yeah. Are there other places where using the oxalate oxidase enzyme to defeat a fungal pathogen has worked like even in a model system like a rabbit opsis? Erik Carlson: Yeah. That's actually how we initially discovered this gene. One of Dr. Powell's posts went to a conference and came back with a summary pamphlet of what she had seen there, and in there was a paper. Researchers using a transgenic tomato expressing Oxo for resistance against sclerotinia, which is another oxalate secreting fungal pathogen. And that was Dr. Powell's so-called Eureka moment, where he said, well, I know that oxalic acid is used by the fungus. Maybe this gene [00:17:00] would work well in American chess, not against the blight Kevin Folta: Fung. Ah, very good. So what are the chances then of a fungus becoming resistant to this particular genetic engineering Erik Carlson: tweak? That's really hard to say, but I, I think that the chances are quite a bit lower than other types of disease resistance mechanisms. Yes, we discussed before, This gene is not killing the fungus or targeting the fungus itself. It's, it's just neutralizing the acid attack. The fungus is producing. One of the interesting aspects of this gene and its resistance mechanism is that it generates hydrogen peroxide when it breaks down that oxy acid and hydrogen peroxide is actually a defense signaling molecule in plants, and it, it activates a suite of defense genes within plants. And so it's likely that. [00:18:00] The Oxo Genee is breaking down that oxalic acid, that it's actually activating the American Shana, its own innate defense genes against the fungus. And so it's unlikely that the fungus would produce a type of resistance in the same way that a pesticidal resistance would where you're killing the fungus and selecting for individuals that are re. To that toxic agent, we're just neutralizing that acid and activating the American chestnuts own defenses. Kevin Folta: Yeah, that's something I didn't realize before because that would also give the tree a little more innate to defense in addition to this ability to def detoxify the fungus's best offense. So this is a really nice balance that that would seem to give a, a broad spectrum resistance to other types of problems. But isn't Darling 58, and now I know why they call it Darling 58, by the way, I didn't know that before. [00:19:00] Isn't, isn't this kind of problematic because all the trees would be clonal and if you're just sticking out another monoculture, right? I mean, is that a problem? Erik Carlson: Yeah, it's that, that's one of the common criticisms we hear is that Darling 58 is a clone. And of course the f very first Darling 58 was a clone. It was grown from from transformed cells, but, All of the offspring from DARLING 58 obviously are not clones. So we started with Darling 58 and then we took Darling 50 eight's pollen and began crossing it with just wild type American chests, not mother trees, and then 50% of the offspring from those crosses inherit that Oxo genee and then are resistant so we can take the pollen and outcross it to genetically diverse mother. And begin to incorporate their genetic diversity into the blight resistant population. And [00:20:00] we have many, many mother trees from throughout the American chestnut range with rich genetic diversity. And we are actively outroing our trees. So we're, we haven't done almost any inter crossing yet, which is where we'll take. Darling oxo positive trees and crossing 'em together. We're constantly out crossing. We're taking our transonic offspring, we're taking their pollen, and then we're pollinating new wild type mother trees to, to get their diversity in. So we're actually a very long ways away from. A clone at this point. We don't even really use the original DARLING 58 poll anymore. It's, it's all moved on to the offspring and the, and the later generations at this point. Kevin Folta: Ah, perfect. Can you tell him, I, I'm being devil's advocate here. ? Yeah. . No, I, I just think this is such a cool project and I've been following it for a long time. Reading through the comments in, in the public comment period. I'm trying to find some of [00:21:00] the things that people don't like, so sure. I guess we talked earlier about how the trees. How the American chestnut has its ability to kinda limp along from a stump that you have roots of a tree that was previously there that are still producing suckers that still can grow. Is there a way that Darling 50 eights or, well, let's just say the blight resistant material could be planted in different areas of its range and then bring back some of. Limping along, stumps with some other kind of strategy to maybe fungicide or something to bring those back and then be able to directly incorporate this gene with native populations to confer resistance onto them? Erik Carlson: Yeah, definitely. We, we would like to plant out in areas where there are chestnuts already present and growing and some of those are able to get to sizes large enough where they can flower. And, and do crosses with. But another thing that people do is they go and they collect [00:22:00] Scion wood from Lowe's, from Lowe's Wild trees and graft them into orchards so that they can be crossed with to incorporate their genetics. But as far as saving the actual trees in the forest, that is pretty difficult there. There have been some attempts to use biocon controls. There's this one biocontrol that's called hypo virulence, which is a virus that infects the blight fungus. And there was a lot of intense research into that in the the seventies and the eighties to see if we could get that virus to spread in the forest. And unfortunately, those attempts were unsuccess. There is work to continue that using genetic engineering where they're actually genetically engineering blight to, to be able to spread that virus. But that has a lot of its own difficulties as far as regula regulators and stuff like that. So there are small you can treat individual trees that are sick. You can do things like mud packing. You can [00:23:00] mud pack caners with soil, and that will actually cure individual caners. It won't cure a whole tree, and it won't cure a forest, but you can preserve non-resistant trees using a lot of Love and attention, I guess you could say . Kevin Folta: Yeah, I guess so. I'm, I just am thinking of maybe those first steps to getting this gene in the more populations and maybe just kind of a related strategy approach. And has anyone done a kind of a Higgs based approach to target the oxalic acid? Producing mechanisms of the fungus that you, you know, it's kind of a similar approach, but rather than having the enzyme already made, just make a mechanism that would transfer. So Higgs, the plant will generate small RNAs that will be taken up by the fungus and shut down fungal genes. It's been done for aflatoxins and other things. Does it seem to be an approach that anyone's thought of for. [00:24:00] Erik Carlson: That's a great question. I'm glad you asked because that is one of the chapters of my dissertation that I'm currently working on right now. This RNAi approach that you're talking about that was used by Monica Schmidt for that alpha toxin that you're talking about is something that I'm actually trying to apply to our trees and I'm currently developing that system right now. Kevin Folta: It's kind of cool because that plus the oxalate oxidase, that would be a real good one, two, Erik Carlson: It would be, and one of the reasons why it seems like it could be very promising is that the, the blight fungus, oxalic oxalic acid production is controlled by single gene. So you could potentially target that single gene with a, with a suppression cassette and, and have a good effect. And there's actually been research done where they've knocked out that single gene in the blight and. That rendered a previously virulent blight strain, a virent. So [00:25:00] it's kind of already been shown that if you disrupt that gene, it can cause the fungus to become less deadly. Kevin Folta: Ah, very good. So when you look across the big scope of criticisms, and I'm sure you've seen them or heard 'em over the years, or you can see them in the public comment period what are the most, or what are the most common criticisms and, and who's making 'em? And, and are there any criticisms that y you and the team have sat back and said, you know, they got a real point here. Erik Carlson: Yeah, there's a few common ones that you see come up. One of them I was just reading about today. Is that by releasing these trees, that we would potentially be creating a larger reservoir for the blight fungus and that this would potentially have a negative effect on the trees that are already out in the forest. Cuz there there would be more blight as a result of that. And it's. I can see conceptually where they're coming from, but in [00:26:00] practice it doesn't really make too much sense because the blight fungus is already out there. If you plant an American chestnut in the forest in the range I can guarantee you within a couple of years it's gonna become infected with blight because it's already out there. It doesn't need chestnuts to host in it. It is hosted by many different species of trees. It's also a SAP troph, so it lives on like the dead wood in the forest. And so it's already out there. There's already plenty of it. You don't need to worry about darling trees creating more of it cuz it's already there to the point that it suppresses all. Non-resistant trees in the forest. Kevin Folta: And have you been maybe I guess, I don't know what the word is. Ha. Have you felt very positive about the comments that you've seen so far, especially from kind of traditional enemies of biotechnology have said We kind of like this application. Erik Carlson: It has been encouraging. One [00:27:00] good example of that would be the Sierra Club endorsed our project and they've been traditionally opposed to genetic engineering, but they see the potential for eco eco ecosystem benefits from this tree as opposed to. Any criticisms they might have had about previous genetic engineering projects And you know, I think it's the story for a lot of people. A lot of people that were traditionally against genetic engineering for other things, a lot of times come around when they see how we've, we've used it in American chess on how we want to. Yeah, it Kevin Folta: is a real step forward for conservation. Someone today in response to something I posted on Twitter said, well, it's not gonna matter. All the playing field is different. You've got new trees that have taken up those niches and the American chestnut is gone forever, that you're not gonna save it by introducing a genetically engineered tree. What would you say to. [00:28:00] Erik Carlson: Well, it, it is true that it's been a long time since the American chestnut filled its previous niche and the forest has kind of moved on. Different trees have filled in that gap, but there are definitely plenty of opportunities to plant this tree throughout the range, and it's something that will happen over a long period of time. We're not instantly gonna be back to where we were. 200 years ago before the blight is something that's gonna take a really long time. But I it's, it's the same story with any of these threatened trees. I mean, if there is a threatened you know, there's hemlock that's threatened, there's ash that's threatened, there's elm, there's all these different trees. and we could just throw up our hands and say, what's the difference? Anyway? They're gone and other trees are just gonna fill it in. That's, I mean, that's true, and that's a choice that you can make. And that's something that we try to tell people is that doing nothing is actually a choice. You're making a choice [00:29:00] to do nothing at that point because you have the opportunity to bring these trees back or to preserve them, and by choosing not to do. They're condemned to their fate, which is the eventual death. And so you can do nothing and let more and more tree species slip into extinction and let those gaps get filled by fewer and fewer species of trees in and make the di the diverse forest less and less diverse by loss of species. Or you can step. And take a proactive approach and say that, no, these trees are worth saving and this diversity is worth preserving, and we have the opp opportunity to do that with these modern molecular biology Kevin Folta: tools. No, very good. I think it's, it, it, it's a really good point because like you say, if, if you dec, if you choose not to decide, you have made a choice, right? Quote , the famous Dr. Getty Lee. I guess the, [00:30:00] the thing that to me about this is that there's so many organizations. I think Nature Conservancy is another one, Sierra Club, who traditionally would not. Be into this that have given this such a good endorsement. And I, I'm really excited about it. But still the main goal today was to get others to maybe participate in this public common period. So is there a do you have a, a particular link that you would like to share or any place where people can get more Erik Carlson: information? Yeah. I actually wrote an op-ed for the Hill recently where I kind of go through all the arguments for deregulating this tree as far as safety goes. There was another article published recently by an opponent of ours, and I decided I wanted to take the time to answer all those criticisms and, and talk about the safety of the tree. So if you look up an article in the. Called the the U S D a's approval of a GE chestnut would be a step forward for threatened species. That will lay out for you [00:31:00] in a lot of detail why I think that these trees are safe and should be Kevin Folta: deregulated. Perfect. And I'll put, put a link in the show notes as well. And I've also written an article in Genetic literacy project that outlines some of this as well, just so you have lots of resources to really dig into this. And I encourage you to look at the arguments for and against it and really come up with a codified decision. And then, Tell your story in that public common period, even if you're against it you know, rational discussion is what's needed here rather than boilerplate. We hate technology rants that come from some of the opponents of this technology. So just in, for those of you who are interested, you can find the public common website. In those articles, those aforementioned articles, but you also can find it@regulations.gov and they, you can use the elegant URL regulations.gov/document/afis for the animal implant [00:32:00] whatever, A P H I S. A P H I S and hyphen 2020 because you obviously started this process a while ago. Going on three years hyphen 0 0 3 0 hyphen 8 2 9 1. And then forward slash comment, if you want to look at the comments or just go to that for anyway, you can find it . And it's just important that you participate in this because the folks who are against the technology have you know, of autofill forms and robots that are happily spamming the space. Science is not a popularity con contest, it's a merit contest, and your meritorious words will go a long way to help the project. So, Eric you know, if this does go just fine, when do they anticipate deregulation might happen? So we Erik Carlson: believe that a hard end date will probably be August of next year. So August of 2020. But we think there's a good chance that it might [00:33:00] happen before that, and we hope that it might be potentially before the pollination season begins, so that if it is deregulated, we can send pollen out to everyone who has mother trees of their own and begin doing crosses with them. But we don't have a, a firm deadline or anything like that, that we would, that we could say, but we're getting towards the end. So it, it's really encourag. Yeah, hopefully. And, and when are you Kevin Folta: supposed to graduate? Erik Carlson: That'll be probably the end of next year. Kevin Folta: Yeah. So this may happen . It would, is is graduation dependent upon the deregulation ? Erik Carlson: I, I don't think so, but that would be kind of a funny thing to put on there. That'd be a little extra Kevin Folta: pressure. you know, you, you could put it in public comment, is that your your future is dependent upon this going through, you know, . Well, Eric, thank you very much for your time on this today. Best wishes to everybody there on the team, especially Dr. Powell and Mina. Please keep us posted on any developments because I would be really excited to [00:34:00] talk about 'em here on the podcast. So thank you very much for joining me again. Erik Carlson: Yeah, thanks for having me, Kevin, and thanks for all the support over Kevin Folta: the years. Yeah. Thank you. And, and you know, and thank you to the folks listening. You know, this is a great time to, to just after the podcast, go find a computer and take a few minutes, even just a few sentences that simply state that this is a very green application of biotechnology to save, essentially an endangered species that is that could return to prominence and, and fill an ecological niche and provide the services ecologically. The American Chestnut once provided. This is a really great example of how this technology can be used to solve problems for people and a planet. This is a Talking Biotech podcast, and we'll talk to you again next week.