For the past two decades, Sara Fern Fitzsimmons has raised seedlings of the American chestnut in research orchards along the Eastern Seaboard, keeping them fed and hydrated and charting their growth.

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Last fall, Fitzsimmons noticed some of the [GMO Darling 58 chestnut] trees seemed small for their age, with weak roots and curling leaves. Worse, they were getting sick as a cankerous orange fungus ate its way out of their trunks, suffering with a disease that decimated the species and to which the trees had been genetically modified to resist.

More than a few saplings died. So did the hope of rescuing the American chestnut tree from the point of near extinction, at least for now. A breakthrough in genetic engineering was intended to bring them back and transform the science of species restoration while potentially netting its inventors millions of dollars and wide acclaim. Instead, a mix-up in the lab has sparked a veritable civil war in the niche conservation community.

Eventually, [University of Maine geneticist Ek Han] Tan found the trees’ OxO gene on chromosome four — the insertion point for an earlier transgenic iteration called Darling 54. For the past decade, the many scientists trying to save the chestnut had been working with the wrong tree. Functionally, Darling 58, the tree touted as the great hope of the chestnut and the next frontier in species restoration, did not exist.

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