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What happened to the transgenic American Chestnut? In January of 2024 news broke out that a "lab error" had "compromised years of research" regarding the re-introduction of American Chestnuts into Eastern North American forests, this time with a simple 700 base-pair gene for blight-resistance inserted into the tree's genome. For those that don't know, an invasive fungus from Asia that was unintentionally introduced to North America devastated the entire population of American Chestnuts, rendering the species "functionally extinct". Within the last decade, however, through genetic engineering, the insertion of a single gene from the wheat plant that can break down oxalic acid has made chestnut blight nothing but a minor pest to the trees whose genome has been altered with it. 

In this episode, we talk with PhD student Erik Carlson from SUNY Syracuse's College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry about this "lab error", how it really wasn't that big of a deal on the long run, and how the project is still on track.