Down in the forest, something stirs

摘要

In September 2004, a group of scientists from around the world announced that they had deciphered yet another genome. By and large, the world shrugged and ignored them. The organism in question was neither cuddly and furry, nor edible, nor dangerous, so no one cared. It was, in fact, the black cottonwood, a species of poplar tree, and its was the first arboreal genome to be unravelled. But perhaps the world should have paid attention, because unravelling a genome is a step towards tinkering with it. And that, in the end, could lead to 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."