Demonstrated biology
Carbocene maintains and propagates Deer, a licensed photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid aspen carrying a synthetic photorespiration-bypass pathway.
Plant biotechnology across planetary time
Plants have remade Earth before.
Earth history is, in part, a history of biological innovations changing atmosphere, climate, land, and elemental cycles. Carbocene develops, carries forward, tests, and scales plant biotechnologies for consequential work in the world.
That work begins with living engineered trees in Oakland: maintaining and propagating a photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid aspen, developing new independently owned plant technologies, preparing responsible field placements, and building the measurement and research systems required to learn from them at increasing scale.
DEMONSTRATED BIOLOGY · WORKING FACILITIES · NEW LINES
Carbocene maintains living engineered trees and is developing new ones.
Carbocene maintains and propagates a demonstrated photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid aspen, operates an Oakland greenhouse and field site, and develops new photosynthetic systems for trees.
Greenhouse, tissue culture, and field work
The Oakland nursery, greenhouse, tissue-culture practice, and field site support plant care, propagation, field placement, observation, and collaboration.
New lines and larger plantings
Carbocene develops new plant lines, tests them across environments, and expands propagation and field evidence.
Interactive Earth-history reconstruction
Deep Time
Explore the interactions among climate, the biosphere, atmospheric chemistry, oceans, and geological time across 4.54 billion years.
The interactive reconstruction places biological change and carbon movement in planetary context, connecting living systems with atmosphere, oceans, materials, and geological reservoirs.
The 2019 talk Deep Time Perspectives on Climate Change framed questions that later informed this reconstruction and Carbocene’s biological work.
Watch the talkIndependent research program
Photosynthetic Systems Engineering
Carbocene is developing designs and constructs for a new generation of engineered trees through systems-level, multi-trait engineering of complementary parts of photosynthesis.
The program connects biological mechanism, transformation, event selection, propagation, physiology, field behavior, management, measurement, and productive use as one development system. The scale pathway is explicit: create improved living lines, generate replicated evidence, multiply the trees that warrant it, and carry them into responsible field use.
Demonstrated platform · Licensed line
Deer: a demonstrated photosynthesis-enhanced tree.
Deer (Populus tremula × P. alba) is a well-characterized, field-deployed photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid aspen. It retained an enhanced growth and biomass phenotype across successive vegetative propagation cycles and subsequently entered replicated field testing.
USDA APHIS determined in 2020 that Deer was outside the plant-pest regulatory framework under 7 CFR part 340. Carbocene maintains and propagates the line under a nonprofit research license.
Field Systems · Permaculture
Biochar, compost, crops, and soil in one Oakland field.
Carbocene uses its Oakland field site to study how carbon, nutrients, biomass, water, plants, and locally available inputs can be cycled through a small cultivation system.
The work combines on-site biochar and compost production, progressive soil building, mixed crop cultivation, and greenhouse propagation. Field plots include blue corn, tepary bean, black-eyed pea, sweet sorghum, desert squash, and desert melon in milpa systems.
Research portfolio
Plants for carbon, construction, soil, and elemental recovery.
Carbocene studies carbon uptake, biomass, forests and crops, durable materials, soils, and ecological communities.
Bamboo biotechnology
Carbocene is developing tissue-culture and transformation methods for durable biological construction feedstocks. The next proof point is an improved line supported by field, material, and life-cycle evidence.
Loblolly pine development
A future phase could carry prior photosynthesis-enhanced loblolly pine work forward from suitable plant stock.
Durability and biochar
Growth determines how quickly carbon enters a plant; wood chemistry, decomposition, durable uses, and biochar influence how long it remains outside the atmosphere. Each requires separate measurement.
Deployment is part of the experiment.
Field work extends controlled development into propagation, management, ecological interactions, biomass and material properties, measurement, site conditions, regulation, and long-term performance.
What scale means
From leaf chemistry to tonnes of wood.
Three numerical anchors connect carbon entering wood to mixed-stand deployment and an integrated forestry systems trajectory.
Carried in one dry tonne of wood
Dry wood is approximately half carbon by mass. One tonne therefore carries about 1.83 tonnes of atmospheric CO₂ into the material stream.
More per hectare
A 25% biomass gain carried by half the trees in a mixed stand adds 12.5% at stand level.
Per hectare per decade
A historical design case combined coppicing, photosynthesis enhancement, and durable carbon pathways including biochar and bio-oil.
Public science in Oakland
Work with the plants in Oakland.
Carbocene conducts collaborative work through its licensed California nursery, Oakland research greenhouse and field site, and relationships with independent biological researchers. Propagation, permaculture, plant care, biochar, biotechnology, and ecological observation create practical ways to participate in ongoing work.
Scientists, growers, biohackers, artists, and engineers work together with living systems.
The preservation and deployment gap
A genotype can disappear before enough evidence exists to reveal its value.
Plant biotechnology moves through transformation, propagation, regulation, field evaluation, measurement, and productive use over years. When an institution changes direction, living lines, methods, data, tacit knowledge, field experience, provenance, and legal rights can separate.
Carbocene maintains Deer under a nonprofit research license, operates the greenhouse and nursery needed to propagate and study it, reconstructs surviving field records, and develops new biology independently.
Why a nonprofit?
Plant biotechnology often needs years between proof and use.
Field development can create public, scientific, physical, and eventual commercial value before it creates a sufficiently immediate or concentrated private return. Carbocene’s nonprofit structure lets work continue through those stages.
Commercial value, licensing, revenue, industrial partnerships, productive land use, philanthropy, and grants can support the mission across different stages of development.
Documented research history
The earlier work ran from transformation through industrial propagation and forest planting.
The earlier work was built collectively by scientists, tissue-culture and transformation teams, greenhouse and nursery staff, field crews, forestry partners, educators, and community collaborators.
By 2024, the program had reached several-million-tree production scale across photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid-poplar events, selected a final lead event, established replicated field experiments, and advanced additional transgenic tree programs into loblolly pine event selection and eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) transformation. Carbocene carries that accumulated experience into continued biological development and new field evidence.
Science
Experimental results and independent scientific context.
Read the Science reportMIT Technology Review
Research history and intellectual origins.
Read the MIT Technology Review accountThe New York Times
Field-planting milestone.
Read The New York Times reportCurrent campaign
Support six months of plant, field, and laboratory work.
$50,000 supports approximately six months of scientific, operating, and field capacity. The campaign supports plant production and propagation, field work and measurement, focused scientific development, partnership building, and the operating infrastructure required to undertake larger programs.