Scientists Are Working To Restore The American Chestnut Tree By Creating A Genetically Modified Species That’s Resistant To Fungal Infections
Researchers at the College of Natural Resources and Environment have collaborated with the American Chestnut Foundation, and together, they confirmed that native trees adapt to their environment in order to survive.
The team analyzed the genome of American chestnut trees from various regions of the Appalachian Mountain range. The research may help restore the American chestnut tree population and adjust its breeding to the climate.
“To understand historical local adaptation to climate, we sequenced the genomes of many wild chestnut stump sprouts and identified relationships between the genome in these different places and the environment of those places,” Jason Holliday, a professor in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, said.
They found evidence of adaptation to different environments in chestnut trees. Then, they divided the Appalachian range into three sections based on similarities in adaptations. One section was in the north, another was in the center, and a third was located in the south.
In the early 20th century, fungal blight was accidentally introduced to the United States, and it significantly reduced the population of American chestnut trees. The blight originated in Asia and caused cankers to grow on trees, killing branches and trunks.
An estimated four billion trees died, and the ones that remained had their life cycle changed forever. Due to chronic fungal blight infections, the species is no longer able to migrate, reproduce, or evolve to keep up with climate change.
For the last 40 years, the American Chestnut Foundation has been creating a genetically modified species that is resistant to fungal blight. However, it wasn’t until now that the idea of adaptive diversity has been seriously considered.
The researchers used deep learning software to predict the geographic origins of a specific genome sequence through the training of a model with trees from known origins.
The results revealed that the foundation is producing an adequate amount of trees with adaptive diversity. But, careful attention must be paid to prevent losing this diversity due to breeding for blight resistance.
wip-studio – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
This information can guide the conservation of diversity from the three regions of the Appalachian Mountain range established in the study, as well as help the foundation restore blight-resistant chestnut trees based on their regions and genomes.
“We learned that the American Chestnut Foundation has more work to do to conserve trees from the southernmost American population, which is especially important to conserve because it is the most genetically diverse, and it is likely to be the best adapted to the warmer climates of the future,” Jared Westbrook, a co-author of the study and the director of science for the American Chestnut Foundation, said.
The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
More About:News