This is going to be a story about what happens when we develop a creative solution to a problem- only to find out that the problem we were solving is now moot.  Not because another solution developed, but because the issue is no longer.  (Please note- as you will see later- the problem didn’t get corrected; no, the problem went away because extinction occurred first.)

But, first a little history.

Pseudomonas syringae is a microbe that causes bacterial leaf blight.  That sound so benign, though.   What P. syringae really does is invade plants that have wounds, and then produces a slew of poisons (toxins) that suppress the host immune system.  Oh- and it lets frost damage plants- which means the ice breaks through the plant cell walls, further allowing invasion of the microbe through those created wounds.

You might just realize that what I really just said was the P. syringae promotes the formation of ice nuclei on plant surfaces.  In other words, the microbe lets water molecules condense and form ice.

Which is exactly what Dr. David Sands (Montana State University) realized back in 1978.  He knew that the microbe was prevalent in the air (at least in Montana where he sampled)- so maybe it was part and parcel of the bio-precipitation cycle, affording better opportunity for water molecules to condense and form clouds.

Y’all know that water freezes at 0 C (aka 32 F).  But, did you know that pure water can remain as liquid even when the temperature has dropped to -37 C.  But, if there are ice nucleators (dust, soot, other inorganic matter), water immediately structures itself as crystals (solids).   And, Sands knew that P. syringae catalyzes crystal formation on plant surfaces at -2 C.   About 20 years later, Dr. Sands found that while hailstones’ (again, in Montana- although the geography is not important) outer cores are virtually microbe free, the central core was replete with P. syringae.

It’s not just Dr. Sands at Montana State that studied this phenomenon.  Dr. Daniel Caldwell (University of Wyoming, with coauthors Drs.  L. Maki, E. Galyan, and M. Chang-Chien) found that  P. syringae was capable of promoting ice formation back in 1974.  In particular, ice could form when the temperature was 3.8 C.  (It turns out that the microbe produces the ice-nucleation protein, inaZ, which in turn adjusts the positions of water molecules, helping them form the lattice structures critical for ice formation.)

Now, back to the story.

Back in the late 1970’s, we were developing a bacterial formulation based upon Pseudomonas syringae.  Why?  Because America (and much of the world) was losing their population of elm trees, which were succumbing to a fungal infection (Ascomycota).  That disease was called Dutch elm disease.

Our project not only included the mass production of the microbe, but   engineering the cells to produce more of the antifungal (antimycotic) substance which, when injected into Dutch elm trees, would eradicate the affliction.

It was a rush job.  Our client (I am not sure if we ever got permission from this multinational giant to publicize their name) wanted to have our first tests ready to go in under six months.  Thankfully, Jim Tobey and I (along with the rest of our team, Sue Frazier and Suzanne Birdsall) managed to pull off the mutations- and lab testing.  Leaving us just a few days to mass produce the microbes and package them for delivery to the client.  (I do recall sealing the last packet at 10:15 AM in our Charlottesville facility.  Leaving us just 130 minutes to hightail it Dulles, park our cars, and catch our plane!)

The results were truly interesting.  This first series of mutant bugs was able to attenuate the Ascomycota, effectively treating the trees.

Except…

Because of the near-extinction of elm trees in America, our client couldn’t see how they could make enough money from the invention.  Between paying us to produce the microbe, packaging, marketing, etc., the return on investment did not meet their cut-off criteria.  (If there were more trees left across America, the project would have been a financial [as well as technical] success.)

But, I did suggest to our client that they could make some pretty good coin selling our development to ski lodges.  To produce artificial snow when conditions didn’t provide them with the natural stuff.

And (as we calculated), being able to pump and freeze the water into snow at just above 4 C (and faster than ice formed at 0 C without our additive) made the product commercially viable for the ski lodges and our client.

Our product was cheaper- and faster acting- than the other processes that existed at the time.

So, while we didn’t solve one of the world’s pressing problems, we- and our client- did manage to create a viable, profitable product.

All’s well that ends well?