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Genetically modified forests coming in the future?
In the Jan 6th 2005 print edition of the The Economist there is an article ("Down in the forest, something stirs --
GM trees are on their way") about genetically modified trees. Below are some key excepts from the article.
IN SEPTEMBER 2004, a group of scientists announced that they had sequenced the genome of the black cottonwood, a species of poplar tree, as the first arboreal genome to be deciphered. This may be the first step towards creating genetically modified forests.
The black cottonwood was given the honour of being first tree because it and its relatives are fast-growing and therefore important in forestry. For some people, though, they do not grow fast enough. As America's Department of Energy, which sponsored and led the cottonwood genome project, puts it, the objective of the research was to provide insights that will lead to "faster growing trees, trees that produce more biomass for conversion to fuels, while also sequestering carbon from the atmosphere." It might also lead to trees with "phytoremediation traits that can be used to clean up hazardous waste sites..."
... the principal commercial goals of arboreal genome research are faster growth and more useful wood. The advantage of the former is obvious: more timber more quickly. More useful wood, in this context, mainly means wood that is more useful to the paper industry, an enormous consumer of trees. In particular, this industry wants to reduce the amount of lignin in the wood it uses.
Lignin is one of the structural elements in the walls of the cells of which wood is composed. Paper is made from another of those elements, cellulose. The lignin acts as a glue, binding the cellulose fibres together, so an enormous amount of chemical and mechanical effort has to be expended on removing it. The hope is that trees can be modified to make less lignin, and more cellulose...
... How such genetically modified trees would fit in with the natural environment is, of course, an important question�and it is important for two reasons. The first is political. The row about GM crops shows that people have to be persuaded that such technology will have no harmful effects before they will permit its introduction. But there is also a scientific reason. Trees have complex interactions with other species, some of which are necessary for their healthy growth.
Claire Halpin, of Dundee University in Scotland, and her colleagues have been looking into the question of environmental interactions using hybrid poplars that contain antisense versions of two other genes for enzymes involved in the production of lignin ... The answer seems to be that they fitted in reasonably well. They grew normally and had normal diplomatic relations with the local insects and soil microbes. They also produced high-quality pulp.
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Source: The Economist
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