College of Forestry

Forest Biotechnology Laboratory

Lab News


Steve Strauss is working with students, faculty and researchers on a new type of genetic technology known as gene editing, or CRISPR. It gives researchers the ability to specify precisely where a genetic change will be made—something that was essentially impossible before. Strauss says the technology is only a few years old and is an exciting step for biotechnology.

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“Scientists saw that and thought, What the hell is this?” said Steve Strauss, a forest biotechnology professor at Oregon State University. As it turned out, bacteria that survive a viral invasion use CRISPR to store the viral gene sequences within their own DNA to “remember” and destroy the virus if it returns.

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PDF files of Steve's presentation can be found on the Presentations page.

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PDF files of Steve's presentations at the Plant and Animal Genome XVI conference in San Diego can be found on the Presentations page.

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Strauss was invited to present the benefits and obstacles to recombinant DNA forms of biotechnology in a December 1, 2017 lecture to the National Academy of Sciences Committee: The Potential for Biotechnology to Address Forest Health

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Glenn Howe and Steve Strauss recently published an article titled Biotechnology Research is Developing New Tools for Tree Breeders in Western Forester

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WFSeptOct17_HoweStrauss.pdf

Steve Strauss is quoted in the Washington Post article titled "Environmentalists are urging the USDA to reject this genetically engineered eucalyptus tree". He said it was difficult to predict the trees’ environmental impact without having a better idea of the scale of plantings. Strauss runs a research consortium that ArborGen once belonged to, and the company has funded some of his research in the past, although the relationship has since ended. “If I were USDA, I would probably make a decision to have a provisional deregulation,” he said, allowing some years to go — perhaps a decade — before conducting another evaluation.

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Steve Strauss delivered lectures in Beijing, China, Concepcion, Chile, and Raleigh, NC in June 2017.  View pdfs of all the lectures on our presentations page.

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Professor Strauss of the OSU College of Forestry, and Professor Taylor of the OSU Department of Integrative Biology, take part in the Corvallis March for Science on April 22nd 2017.

 

 

 

 

Steve Strauss, an Oregon State University professor who studies biotechnology, said lawmakers should ask themselves whether they want Oregon agriculture to be known for innovation or for exclusion.

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