Talking Biotech 040 -- Genetic Engineering in Forestry

I want to see science serve a useful purpose to improve the standard of living for all people.

Hey, why is anyone fighting food advance?

A very small percentage of the world's population is fortunate enough to have the luxury of turning down food. We've arranged a society based on science and technology in which Because nobody understands anything about science and technology. You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery. You're listening to Talking Biotech, a weekly podcast illuminating issues in agricultural and medical biotechnology. Your questions and concerns are addressed using a science-based approach with the goal of driving discovery to application with communication.

Now here's your host, Get it on, get it on. No choice but to get it on. Mandate. Get it on. Yeah. Uh, hi everybody. It's, uh, Kevin and it's the Talking Biotech Podcast, episode number 40. And, uh, for those of you keeping score at home, and number 40 is really cool because we've been talking a lot about everything from microbes that make cheese, To plants, to pigs. And let's talk about forests. Now trees present a unique challenge because their long regeneration time, and we've heard something about this with citrus, that when we're trying to breed trees or genetically engineer trees, we're up against the unique challenge of time. A forest takes a long time to grow. And so the changes that you make, you may not realize the benefits that you've installed for many years to come. So it takes a special kind of fortitude to want to hang out and force these issues along. And that's today's guest in a nutshell, Dr. Steve Straus. Now, Dr. Steve Straus, I've known for a couple decades, and a wonderful scientist, a wonderful mentor, A great guy to know in science. And I was so excited to get to talk to him ever since I started Talking Biotech podcast. We've run together in the mountains— or the hills outside of San Diego during conferences. We've laughed a lot together. He's a wonderful scientist and a good friend. And one of the things I really like about his approach is how he really does connect very well with, with the public, and he's an excellent speaker. And he's at Oregon State University, distinguished professor, and someone who really is such a good advocate for what we do in science. So here we go with today's interview with Dr. Stephen Straus. So today's interview on Talking Biotech Podcast was one I've been excited to do for a long long time, since the beginning of this podcast. And I'd like to welcome today distinguished professor from Oregon State University, the College of Forestry, Dr. Steve Strauss. Welcome to Talking Biotechs, Dr. Strauss.

Thank you very much, Kevin.

I'm really glad that you're able to join us because I've seen you give so many presentations, probably over most of my career, that always have really framed the need to incorporate genetic engineering as at least partially a strategy in forestry. And so what are some of the unique differences in thinking about forestry and management of trees that make them different from crops and the way that we may want to use this as a part of a genetic improvement strategy?

Yeah, that's really, really important to have that in your mind when you think about where genetic engineering might or might not fit. Oftentimes people ask me to just talk about trees and biotechnology. And first thing I always point out is that, you know, there's a lot of horticultural trees— apples, coffee, papaya— and then there's forest trees. And so which one are you talking about? And then when you're talking about forest trees particularly, I like to think about 3 different kinds of applications. One is kind of like horticulture, very intensive, Usually we have varieties or clones that are intensively managed for some particular product— wood, pulp, energy, chemicals, whatever it might be. We've already done a lot of breeding and now we want to refine it further. And that's usually where we're thinking genetic engineering might have a role. Then there's a lot of forestry that's sort of intermediate where we have tree farms, we have plantations, But they often grow 10, 20, 40, 60 years. In Oregon here with Douglas fir, we have tree farms all over the place, but they're mostly grown on a 30 to 60 year rotation, extremely diverse. The public expects a lot more than just wood products from them. They expect all kinds of biodiversity and ecological services. So there's a lot less you can do with genetic engineering in that kind of a framework for economics. and the broader social issues. And then there's wild forests, which, you know, people use all over the world for forest products of all kinds. And we have lots of forests that are under great, great stress. Some of that's due to climate change. Some of that's due to exotic diseases. Some of that's due to native diseases and pests that have gotten worse due to climate change and human interventions. Where sometimes trees don't have the natural diversity you'd like, and so we'd like to be able to use genetic engineering very selectively to help them out, to breed resistant trees for these wild ecological types of forests.

Well, one of the things that I always marvel at with tree biologists is the challenges of working with trees, and I think that really underscores the immediacy to have this extra type of technique to use. But what are some of the inherent challenges of working with trees?

Yeah, well, you know, the product takes years, and so the research takes years. So, you know, no research in a tree that's going to go from an idea, some kind of a gene, to putting the gene in, genetically engineering it to see what it does, testing different ways to put it in and modify it, to then looking at the trait, and like crop breeding, You really need to get into the field before you really know what the trait is and whether it has unexpected effects. So, you know, I have several projects that have taken, you know, half or more of my career of about 30 years now to see through from idea to gene to transformation to getting it out in the field. So that requires, you know, some innovative ways to fund things, working with lots of partners. The other thing is that, you know, trees are often many species, many varieties are very hard to genetically engineer. This is true for crops also, but I think it's even more so for trees. Some species like poplars are populous— cottonwoods, aspens are relatively easy. I've never met a poplar I couldn't transform, but some of them took a lot of work to do it. But other species I've worked with, alder and willow are 2 examples, not that different from poplars, impossible. No one's ever made a genetically engineered plant Anywhere in the world, despite some significant efforts in my lab and others. So that inability to transform or transform efficiently can be a big limiting factor as well.

And just for the listeners who don't have a lot of background in this area, to say transform is when we're talking about the process of inserting the gene of interest and then regeneration, bringing that back from tissue culture or from whatever state, uh, to a fully grown tree.

So that's exactly right, Kevin. And the latter part is often the hardest.

Yeah, I know there's a— I always was amazed at a lot of the trees that seem like they would be really difficult that people do transform. And some of the easy ones, the ones that seem like they grow out of every crack and fissure and seem to, you know, be very adaptable, those tend to be really difficult. It seems to be, at least to my, uh, rather tree-naive mind.

And there's not a lot of science to sort of why some are much harder than others, what the blocks are. And I think that's kind of one of the grand challenges, if you will, to make genetic engineering something that anybody could do, not just the big companies, is to figure out what these blocks are. And then once you know, to create workarounds for them. And I think we can do that, but it's going to take some effort.

Well, let's talk about accomplishments in the area of trees. I know that on this podcast we've spoken with a number of experts who've transformed trees and seen incredible benefits towards specific goals. And for instance, we had papaya in episode 26, we talked about the non-browning apple way back in episode 4, and we've done citrus transgenics in episode 14. And what are some other really important tree projects that you're aware of that need to be on our radar?

Yeah, there's quite a variety of things that have been done and even done in the field that are, you know, very encouraging and exciting in terms of someday perhaps scaling them up and making them parts of breeding programs. You know, one is— in fact, a couple examples come right from agriculture. And so in my own lab and others, we've done work with insect-resistant trees using the Bt gene for beetle resistance. And they've had remarkable benefits under field conditions, about a 20% growth benefit when you're able to protect them, even when beetle pressure isn't high. Herbicide resistance, also much better control of weeds. Again, almost a 20% growth benefit by better weed control compared to conventional. There's been a lot of work with trees to modify wood quality to make it better for particular products, to make the wood easier to pulp requiring less energy or chemicals, easier to make ethanol or other biofuels at. So there's been some very exciting progress there as understanding of wood chemistry has gone forward. There's been great work to try to create coproducts, new chemicals in trees to have a separate product that wouldn't be possible otherwise. A small company spun off from Washington State under Professor Norm Lewis producing a scent that might have high value in the fragrance industry and might also be a feedstock for jet fuel. if we scale up to make biofuels. And I guess the last one that comes right to my mind, close to my heart, is one of these— the things that makes breeding trees hard is that the generation time is long. So we often have to wait 3, 5, 10, 20 years for flowering. Once we make a cross and have some improved progeny and want to continue that kind of improvement, it can be a very long wait. And so scientists have identified some of the genes that control the onset of flowering And we can turn them up selectively, and we can reduce generation time from 5 or 10 years to 6 months to 1 or 2 years. So that speeds all kinds of breeding, even if that trait, the rapid breeding, ends up being removed at the end. It can just speed up conventional breeding, and that can be very useful.

Maybe let's touch on that just a little bit, because that's actually a really neat innovation. That for years people have been looking for this flower-inducing gene that could take a plant that's growing vegetatively and then inspire the parts of the plant that create the floral meristems or the floral growth to turn into that flowering structure. And these genes were— have been elucidated over the last 20 years. One of them is known as FT for flowering locus T. And as I understand, that is being used in many different trees. to make a rootstock that then can kind of exert its effect on the scion or on the top part of the tree to cause it to flower early and really decrease the breeding time. Where has that kind of technology been used, and is there anything else I left out with that?

Yeah, Kevin, my understanding of that area is that there has been a lot of interest in trying to have the rootstock make the FT, transmit it up to the scion, then get the early flowering. And then the scion would not be transgenic. So if you don't want to get involved with GMOs, but just speed conventional breeding. And it turns out that we actually have done that in our own laboratory here with poplars. Ralph Scores and others have done it with cherry, and it hasn't worked for us. And at least not on a scale of a big tree. You can work on a micrograft in a petri dish. And so what people do instead is they have the FT throughout the plant. The FT promotes very rapid flowering, and then the progeny, because it's a single gene, it's in heterozygous condition, so there's, you know, 2 copies of every gene and there's just 1 copy of this FT, means that half the progeny don't have it. So you have the fast cycling, but then you can choose just the progeny that don't have it for commercial application or further research. So that's the main way that it's being used, and it is actively being used. In, I know, plum breeding and apple breeding to try to accelerate introgression, meaning bringing in valuable genes from other varieties and species into commercial varieties faster.

Yeah, also in citrus, the folks down at Lake Alfred, they have these little trees that are probably 6 inches tall, 15 centimeters for those listening in the rest of the world. I got to speak bilingual, right? 15 centimeters that this little tiny tree is flowering Because they grafted a little piece of wood or a little piece of budwood onto a rootstock that was transformed with FT. And anything to accelerate really the transformation and deployment of these technologies in trees looks like a big benefit. And maybe some of the good applications, I know that there's a lot of interest in like battling climate change, A lot of problems in the Pacific Northwest that we've seen with the climate's changing faster than trees can adapt, or in the case of the, the Bill Powell's chestnut trees, here you're able to potentially repatriate an entire forest based upon the use of this kind of technology. And where people frequently will say, well, this is all about deforestation and, you know, getting land for crops, I kind of see this is about reforestation. And so what, what's being done in those areas?

Yeah, you know, the climate change is happening fast. And we know we have to keep a lot of diversity in our forests to help cope with it. And, and we also know that, like, like we were talking about, it's hard to genetically engineer lots of species and lots of varieties. So the challenges of of saving a forest by genetic engineering are very, very great. I think the kinds of places you might see genetic engineering be used to help as one of many tools to help with climate change is one of the things we see is that there's lots of diseases proliferating. Sudden oak death is one in the West. That's a new one that's spreading rapidly, and there's several others as well. That it's often— there isn't a resistance to them. They're often exotic pathogens that if we could add that into the mix along with the other genetic tools we use, such as assisted migration, where you actually move the variety hundreds of miles in anticipation of how the climate's going to be, or you use entirely different species in some cases, those are probably the more important genetic techniques. But in particular cases where a forest is threatened by a disease or where you have a change in the soil where it becomes more saline, for example, due to rising sea level, I could see genetic engineering having a role. But as I think we may talk about later, one of the problems is to do that would have to be very fast. It would have to be very efficient, aggressive research. And because a lot of the social issues, much of that research is not happening or happening Or it's very, very, very scaled down.

Yeah, that would— and we'll definitely touch on that because there is something very, uh, there's a lot of resistance to playing with trees, uh, for some reason, when it seems to me to be the most imperative reason and reason, uh, or research avenues. And when we think about the other basic barriers, I mean, other than we talked about the time and the other transformation stuff, but are there other biological barriers to making these trees more efficiently?

You know, one of them is just, you know, we don't know that much about the biology of these organisms yet. You know, we had our first tree genome in 2006, and others have come along. The majority of the genes in there, we don't know what they do. So mostly, we're still, you know, using genes provided from other places. So we really need a lot more analysis of sort of what matters in making a tree better for a particular purpose. So that's one deficiency. We already mentioned the difficulty in transformation, putting genes in, getting back healthy trees. And then I think we'll talk a little bit about some of the social issues. But then again, coming back— and last point I'll make is coming back to where we started the podcast. If you have lots of diversity and you have long time frames, Often the economics just doesn't pencil out, given the biological obstacles plus the timeframe, plus, as we'll talk about, I think the social obstacles. A lot— for a lot of companies, a lot of even the Forest Service, it just doesn't pencil out to invest in it versus investing in other areas.

That's very true. And as I understand, that's even true though in non-GE forestry, that just you're, you're dealing with profit companies that do this are thinking about profit and thinking about the costs with a 20-year projection. And it changes really the dynamic of this. But if we're in the business of trying to create changes that are positive, it's hard for us to make those predictions as well. And, you know, so—

That's exactly right, yeah.

So we'll take just a short break here, and then we'll come back on the other side and talk about ideas about gene flow, and we'll cover some of the issues. that have to do with the social acceptance of tree crops. So this is Dr. Steve Straus. Well, he's Dr. Steve Straus. I'm Kevin Folta talking to you on the Talking Biotech Podcast.

Grandma, don't touch that radio! Hi, Talking Biotechers. This is Vern Blazek of the Vern Blazek Science Power Hour and booth announcer for the Talking Biotech Podcast. We're moving into our 40-somethingth episode, and we get lots of requests for an interview with Dr. Folta himself. What makes that dude tick? How is that cat wired? We'll explore the deep crevasses of his soul in Talking Biotech episode number 50. So, you might recall that I interviewed him on my podcast, the Vern Blaytheck's Science Power Hour, with your host, Vern Blaytheck. It was considered by some a raging case of non-transparency, by those who wanted to cash a check with a manufactured scandal. It was so much not a story that we're going to do it again, only using your questions. If you have a question you'd like me to ask Dr. Folta's Send it to my attention at talkingbiotechpodcast@gmail.com. I'll assemble all of the questions and grill that turkey with my interview for episode 50. He's a scientist, he's a thespian, and I'm a hard-hitting booth announcer that's glad to ask the hard questions. Let me know what you'd like to know. And now back to the Talking Biotech Podcast.

And so we're back to the Talking Biotech Podcast. We're joined today with Dr. Steve Straus. Dr. Straus is a distinguished professor at Oregon State University and is here to talk to us today about genetic engineering in trees. And we're taking a very broad kind of 30,000-foot view on this entire discipline with some of its unique challenges as well as its unique opportunities. And one of the big issues that we're dealing with is kind of the sacred nature of forests and trees. These are pristine places that all of us have great reverence for. And I like to think of these engineering, genetic engineering, as tools to protect them and to maintain them, whereas many see them as problematic. And one of the big questions has to do with gene flow. So what happens when you put a genetically engineered tree in the forest? How do you control its pollen and its spread? And what has your lab done to investigate that or to remedy that?

Yeah, gene flow is a really big issue for the reasons that you said, Kevin. A lot of our trees have wild relatives or feral, meaning they've naturalized over time if they're from another place, relatives that they can cross-pollinate with and become part of that natural or naturalized forest. And so for many people, I think environmental consciousness around the U.S. and around the world is growing. That just seems like crossing of a boundary that we shouldn't cross, getting a human modified or a gene from a different species into the wild. So that's an issue. Also, a lot of our trees, in contrast to some of our most highly bred crops, are not fully domesticated, meaning they can spread on their own. So it's not just pollination, it's also the seed can just move and establish and be competitive. It's also conceivable that in trying to engineer desirable traits for plantations, like stress resistance, like disease resistance, we may enhance the fitness of these wild trees and affect the biodiversity that depends on them. And so there are a lot of those kinds of issues, and it really comes right home because some of the pollen and seed, but particularly the pollen in trees, can move really far. This is true of many crops, but trees are big, many of them are wind-pollinated, and you get storms and the pollen can really become a regional pollen cloud, and so the genes can get out real far. And to do research, like we were talking about earlier, that really shows that some kind of genetic engineering is beneficial, doesn't disturb the tree, you need to do research over many years where the trees actually do start to flower. So there's a lot of important research that's very hard to do. You can often only do the research for 1 or 2 years and then have to destroy it so there's no flowering and spread. And that's, again, for this ethical concern the public has, and that's reflected in the regulations that basically say without very intensive and rigorous review, you cannot have any of these releases, even tiny, tiny amounts. So it really is an obstacle for research. So we've done over the years, you know, we are— we focus on some of the most intensively grown trees in the world: poplars, eucalyptus. In my part of the world, in the Pacific Northwest, these poplar plantations are clonal. They're drip irrigated in many areas. They're really— and they're legally crops. They're really a part of agriculture, not forestry. And the pollen and the fruits And the seed don't seem to have significant ecological functions. So we've said, boy, it might be the easiest thing to avoid all of this difficulty with public acceptance and the regulations to prevent flowering entirely. So we've been working on that for a number of years. The technology has made incredible strides during my career. The first male sterile plant was engineered in 1990, the first female sterile plant in 1992. And then we've been following those models. Some of the latest work is using a technique called RNA interference, RNAi, that won a Nobel Prize in 2008. And that's what was used to make the virus-resistant papaya that you've talked about. It can also be used to turn down the genes within a plant. And so we've used that successfully to turn down the expression of a gene called leafy. And we found that when we do that, we get very normal-looking trees that produce no flowers whatsoever. So that seems really good. And then, and so we're pursuing that further to make sure the trees are healthy and the technology is reliable. And now we've moved on as the science has gone further into something called gene editing, where instead of turning down these native genes required for flowering, we can change them. We can mutate them. We can break them so that we know that if we have, if we have that done, That tree will never be able to flower. Its progeny will not be able to flower, should it ever have any. And so, um, so that's where we're moving now. So it's very exciting the way the technology has progressed, getting better and get better, getting more and more, uh, reliable.

We've spoken a lot on the podcast about the gene editing, and just to reiterate, that's just the process where scientists can go in and very precisely change— think of it as having a And I now have this dated reference, and I need a better one, but a giant set of encyclopedias where you can go in there and change one letter and affect the entire set, or a specific trait in that set of encyclopedias. I need a better analogy, but whatever.

That's not bad.

But what about how these kinds of barriers, how do they affect people's interest in research?

The—

so we framed all these important needs, and we talked about tree disease and climate. What's the research environment like, and how is that stifled by regulation?

You know, it's, uh, there's 2 kinds of barriers, and they're related to each other, of course, and because, uh, regulation also affects the marketplace, the other significant barrier. So, and then the whole situation with GMO crops Affects general public knowledge and sentiment. So the situation we have is, as I said, the regulations, particularly around containment and the very high cost of getting something through regulatory approval. So most of our trees are not equivalent to a soybean crop or changing a gene in a soybean where a company may make $1 billion if that gene is used very, very widely. We're often needing to engineered trees, many, many different genotypes, and the ones that grow in certain places are very different than other places. To really modify something like poplar in Oregon, just in this area, we probably need to modify something like 30 different varieties if you wanted to address the whole land base. So the regulations and the high costs every time you make an insertion of a gene is a significant deterrent. But the other one that's really even bigger these days is because of sort of concerns, general public concern about GMO, we have a thing called green certification that's very, very widespread in forestry. And there's many different kinds of it. But all of them right now, because the sense that the public is not ready for it, have a GMO-free, a no-GMO policy. And that extends right down to research. So it would make sense a lot of academic researchers don't have access to forestland, it would make sense to partner with companies to test a lot of these concepts and see if they work. And now pretty much all of them— and this is all of the big companies throughout the world— have some kind of certification that prohibits that, even at the research phase. So that's kind of a marketplace perception, is that they don't have to do that, but they feel like it gives them better access to markets. People value their products more by having the certification. So, and it's kind of like organic food, which is also, you know, zero tolerance or near-zero tolerance for conscious use of GMOs. And so it's really the regulations plus the market certification provide an extremely great barrier for getting it really out of the laboratory, out of sort of small boutique kinds of greenhouse and field studies into the larger world.

Well, that's really too bad. I kind of— I never noticed buying like a GMO-free ream of paper or something. I never thought about that possibility.

Yeah.

It's gluten-free paper. So I know that there have been a lot of concerns, a lot of meetings that have been disrupted by activists because of, you know, the possibility of discussing or deployment of GM trees, and even some— a number of research facilities that have been targeted. A ways back now, but do you— has that been any of your work or other works of colleagues in the area?

Yeah, back up to about 2001, we experienced vandalism. Many of my colleagues did. We had about 1,000 small trees that were damaged here in Corvallis, Oregon. I was collaborating with Professor Bradshaw at the University of Washington And his office was actually firebombed and it led to burning down half of his building up there because of that research. And the fact that we were tweaking some genes already within poplars to sort of suppress them using the technology of the time, we weren't inserting genes from a faraway place. We were really trying to domesticate these trees, but using this new method was really lost on the on the people who feel so strongly that it's just wrong or it's controlled by corporate forces and so on and so forth. So that pretty much, with 9/11, which was in 2001, the strong law enforcement presence— ecoterrorism is classified by the FBI as a form of terrorism— that went away. And it was really due to a very small number of people. Whether it'll come back, we don't know, but that has not been a factor in my research since, since about 2001. If we look in Europe, for example, it has continued to be a factor, not just for forestry but for agriculture. And many, many researchers and many companies have essentially given up doing that essential field research there because of the sense that it'll be destroyed. Years and years of work will be destroyed. So why bother? So it's a very unfortunate situation over there.

Yeah, it really is. And we didn't talk about this in the podcast yet, but we really should touch on it maybe, is look at the number of places where the solutions could be genetic engineering. And I think of citrus in the state here, but let's talk about wild populations. The issue down here with laurel wilt that's been affecting All of our red bay trees going into swamp bays, other kinds of bays in that family, including avocados, are affected by this. And are there any efforts in those areas for that particular disease that look promising?

Yeah, you know, I don't know the situation with laurel wilt. I would call up my colleague John Davis at the University of Florida or others to get the latest update on that. But there's no question that there's a lot of diseases of wild trees around the country. Hemlock is under very, very serious threat. Ashes are under dire threat from an introduced longhorn beetle. And breeding just doesn't have efficient or sometimes any solutions whatsoever. And there's no question that if genetic engineers were empowered to do the research and there weren't these huge market and regulatory obstacles, It could be a major tool for dealing with these issues. And so I do feel like it's very unfortunate that there's kind of a sense of indiscriminate hysteria, if you want to call it, about GMOs that is affecting really everybody in agriculture and forestry. And perhaps more so in forestry, because like we were talking about, you really need faith. You need a stable research and regulatory environment that companies and public sector researchers feel like they can be confident if they put in the work, in 10 or 20 years they will be able to use a new product. And that really isn't here by and large today. So it really is costing us in the future today. We're disinvesting now, and that means we're not going to have— be able to take advantage of these solutions in the future. Fortunately, for a few really dire situations like citrus, There's a little bit of work with ash, very, very little going on, but there's a couple of cases where people are doing some work, and that's wonderful, but nowhere near the need that's out there.

I think one of the sad parts will be looking at this retrospectively when these technologies are accepted, when people are using them in medicine and annual crops, and it's no big deal anymore. We'll be sitting here saying, you know, what did we do when we had the chance? Why didn't we do this before? And I think that that's what I love about the internet and a durable resource like this podcast. You know, this will be like looking back into the Space Age essentially and reflecting upon the science that we could have done to change things in the future. So if I can ask you kind of a last thing here. If you could get out your crystal ball, how bad is this? And do you sense that there may be some changes in regulatory climate or social climate going on around trees and forestry with respect to genetic engineering?

Yeah, you know, the, the science and technology has been growing and getting better. And there's no sign of that abating. What's happened in the field of genetics, genomics, genetic engineering during my career is, you know, incredible. It's been so exciting to be a part of that. On the other hand, the social angst as reflected in these very strict regulations and very strict marketplace barriers has also become much larger and more hostile. And I think the public maybe is more misinformed than they ever have been right now. About the technology in general, so it's difficult to predict the future. Certainly difficult to predict you know when things are going to change. My sense is that you know innovators and pioneering companies will continue to put out these innovations that you know you look at and say these are better. In my class just yesterday, we were teaching about the non-browning apples and the non. Bruising, browning potatoes and telling them the story of how they're made and all the benefits they could have. And so I sense these kinds of things will keep coming forward and it'll just be impossible for people to say these things are toxic and dangerous anymore. And then on regulation, you know, I think to the credit of our government, we've tried since the beginning to have a product rather than a method-based regulation. And so we don't say just because it's genetically engineered, it's necessarily good or bad. Let's look at it case by case. In reality, that's gotten kind of lost a little bit. But the government now is taking what I think is a serious rethink of the regulations. And then around the world, lots of countries are doing a rethink of what should regulation look like in the world of gene editing, where we can very precisely change genes that are already there. and trying to find a way to relax them amidst this hostile social environment. So I think eventually, you know, the regulations and social views will change just because the technology and the science is so powerful and moving forward. I'm afraid to say also that probably for forestry and trees, the benefits of that change are going to be— are going to be the slowest because things take a long time and genetic engineering has a relatively small niche in our whole business. So good and bad, that's the way I see it. But don't ask me when it's all going to happen.

I won't. If people did want to know more about what you do, or maybe resources or social media interface, where would they find more information?

Yeah, I have a Twitter handle that's @shstrouse. I'm not a vigorous Twitterer, but I just tweeted a new scientific commentary I published in Nature Biotechnology on Friday. Talking about regulation in a way, I think, to make it smarter. So you can see some of the more major things I've done tweeted if you go to that Twitter handle, and I welcome you to follow me there. And I hope to have more of those as I have significant research and, and thinking breakthroughs.

Very good. And I've always appreciated your thinking breakthroughs. So very cool. Well, thank you very much. That's Dr. Steve Strauss. He's the distinguished professor at Oregon State University. College of Forestry. Thank you for joining us on Talking Biotech.

Thank you very much, Kevin.

And we'll be right back with— oh no, we won't. Never mind. Thank you very much. We're also—

A word from our sponsor. How about it? You have a sponsor to come in here?

Yeah, I wish I had a sponsor. And what a fitting way to end a conversation with Dr. Strauss, and that's with a laugh. A guy who I've enjoyed many great conversations and many laughs with over the years. So reminding us that genetic engineering can have tremendous benefits in trees, and it's not just all about crops and microbes and other critters. It's sometimes about the organisms that share the majority of the space on the terrestrial planet, the ones that take forever to grow, and that's the trees. So think about them next time we're talking about biotechnology in ways that it may be able to benefit all of us, because Trees are a tremendous part of this planet. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again pretty soon. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Talking Biotech Podcast. Please send your suggestions for guests, comments, or questions TalkingBiotech@gmail.com.

Please write a review on iTunes and recommend this podcast to a friend. More downloads and reviews raise the visibility of this podcast and help us reach a wider audience with science.