APHIS – Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service – A unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for protecting animal welfare, animal health, and plant health.
Backcross breeding – a technique to develop disease resistance wherein American and Chinese chestnuts are bred together and their progeny are bred with American chestnuts to produce a mostly American chestnut with traits of resistance
B3F3 (or similar conventions) – common nomenclature to refer to 7th generation backcrossed progeny of American and Chinese chestnuts by TACF
BRAG – Biotechnology Risk Assessment Grant – A funding program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture intended to support generation of scientific evidence needed to assess affects of introduction of genetically engineered organisms
CRISPR – Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats – a technique for gene editing and insertion
Cryphonectria parasitica – The scientific name of the fungus that causes chestnut blight
Common garden experiment – A type of experiment used to compare how organisms from geographically or environmentally distinct sources respond to living and growing in the same environment. This helps parse their apparent differences into those driven by genetics and those driven by their environment.
Constitutive promoter – A promoter is a DNA region that “switches on” a gene. Technically it initiates “transcription” which is the process of creating a complementary strand of RNA which then makes a protein (for example, the enzyme oxalate oxidase). A “constitutive” promoter is one that is always “switched on” meaning the gene is expressed at all times in all tissues.
D58 – Darling 58 – transgenic variety of American chestnut developed at SUNY-ESF
DarWin – Darling with Wound Inducible promoter. A transgenic chestnut tree which expresses the same OxO gene as D58, but only when wounded and only at the site of wounding, developed at the Powell lab at SUNY-ESF
Deregulation – the current process of submitting appeals to the USDA, EPA, and FDA to allow wider dispersal and expanded trials of the transgenic D58 chestnut tree
EPA – Environmental Protection Agency
FDA – Food and Drug Administration
FHI – Forest Health Initiative
GCO – Germplasm Conservation Orchard – an orchard where seeds from wild-type American chestnuts are planted to preserve their genetic diversity
Hypovirulence – a phenomenon wherein the blight fungus is weakened by infection with a virus. Depending on the interaction and relative virulence of the fungus and virus, the fungus may exhibit slower growth, reduced virulence and overall reduction in fitness.
MOU – Memorandum of Understanding – an agreement between TACF and a partner organization that documents the goals and general terms of that partnership
OxO – Oxalate oxidase – The terms commonly applied to a gene that produces the enzyme oxalate oxidase, which neutralizes oxalic acid. In American chestnut restoration context, the OxO gene is one of the most promising to confer resistance to the chestnut blight fungus.
PRR – Phytophthora root rot/ink disease
Phytophthora cinnamomi – the scientific name for the organism which causes Phytophthora root rot
Pure/purity – a commonly misconceived quality attributed to wild-type American chestnuts. All chestnut species have experienced hybridization events
Reciprocal transplant experiment – A set of replicated common garden experiments where organisms from all source populations are compared in each other’s and in their own habitats of origin. This helps uncover whether particular populations are well adapted only to their own habitats or in other habitats as well.
RNAi – In the context of American chestnut restoration, this is a method whereby partial sequences of important pathogenicity genes from the chestnut blight fungus are inserted into American chestnut. The partial fungal sequences are expressed in the chestnut tree as double-stranded RNA, which are then degraded by the chestnut trees through a pathway called RNA interference. The degradation of the key fungal pathogenicity genes by the host reduces the chestnut blight fungal virulence. Thus far ESF researchers have used this technology to silence chestnut blight genes involved in the production of oxalic acid, which reduces the chestnut blight fungus’s ability to kill tissues in chestnut bark.
ROC – Regional Outreach Coordinator – employee of TACF responsible for oversight of chapters and volunteer initiatives in their respective region
RSC – Regional Science Coordinator – employee of TACF responsible for oversight of scientific endeavors in their respective region
RSC – Resistance Screening Center – a US Forest Service facility at Bent Creek Experimental Forest, Asheville, NC
S&T – Science & Technology Committee of the Board of Directors of The American Chestnut Foundation.
SSA – Small stem assay. An inoculation trial performed on seedling trees wherein the pathogen is artificially administered in order to compare differences in apparent response for early screening of disease resistance.
Stacked resistance – a technique utilizing the best progeny of the backcross breeding program to then cross with transgenic American chestnut to yield offspring with resistance characteristics from both techniques
SUNY-ESF – State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Transgenic – modification of an organism using an inserted gene that comes from a different organism that is not sexually-compatible with the target organism
TACF – The American Chestnut Foundation
USDA – United States Department of Agriculture
Wild-type American chestnut – a tree which is either a member of the remnant population of American chestnuts in the wild, or progeny thereof.