While there are still no instant trees, scientists in Israel have managed to find a way to grow trees, vegetables and fruit 30-50 percent faster than by conventional methods. This discovery could eventually restore depleted rainforests as well as trees and plants grown commercially for paper, wood and food around the world.
by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich
As we approach the end of the millennium, two of the world's most serious problems are the shortage of food and widespread deforestation. In this button-pushing era of quick reactions and instant gratification, wouldn't it be nice if we were able to speed up the process of growing trees and plants in order to address these serious issues?
Dr. Oded Shoseyov and his team at the Hebrew University's Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Quality (located in Rehovot) have been working on this very idea. They have discovered and cloned a gene called CBD (Cellulose Binding Domain). Cellulose is the most common natural material and the most important compound in the biosphere, says Dr. Shoseyov. Many things we use in our everyday lives, including clothing, paper and furniture, are composed of cellulose, which is continuously reused by nature as part of the carbon cycle.
Through genetic engineering technology, CBD can be made to produce, in large quantities, a protein that acts as a kind of biological glue for binding to cellulose. This technology can be used to accelerate plant growth as well as to attach different kinds of molecules to cellulose to achieve a variety of other desired special effects with potential commercial applications.
The Hebrew University team first tried the technology on tobacco. They then used genetic engineering to speed up the growth of poplar trees and potatoes, and they are currently working on cotton, tomatoes and corn.
Dr. Shoseyov explains that it might be difficult to apply the process to speeding up the growth of vegetable plants and fruit trees -
not scientifically, but politically, due to strong opposition in Europe to genetically modified food. But even if the technique is not used in the foreseeable future for food, there is a huge commercial and ecological demand for wood and paper.
"We cannot yet prove that it will be effective for all trees, but we are hopeful that it can be widely applied, because all trees and plants contain cellulose," says Shoseyov. "It worked on the poplar, which is a North-American tree, and we believe it will work on the eucalyptus, which is very fast growing and which can be used to make paper." However, he adds, "considerable work still has to be done before the process is ready for commercial application."
The CBD technology has potential for other fields as well. It can be applied to produce pharmaceuticals, to manufacture diagnostic devices for food, and for clinical and veterinary testing. Even the use of enzymes in washing machine detergents could benefit from this technology, which would target the enzymes, by the cellulose-binding effect, directly onto the dirty clothes.
The team's discoveries led to the formation of CBD Technologies, a biotechnology start-up company in Rehovot not far from the Faculty of Agriculture. Four patents have been granted in the US, and others have been awarded internationally.
Although the cloned sheep "Dolly" is showing signs of premature ageing, Dr. Shoseyov says he is not worried that his speedy trees will age faster than ordinary ones, because the technique used for plants is very different than that used for animals. Nevertheless, Dr. Shoseyov and his colleagues will not have to wait too long to see the first fruits of their efforts: the launching of an experimental tree-growing field in Virginia, USA has already been approved.