Bliss Biosciences
Biotechnology - San Francisco, California, United States
Bliss Biosciences Employees
Bliss Biosciences Details
Bliss Biosciences develops plant tissue culture protocols for rare plants in California and beyond. After development, we work with nurseries to deliver these plants at scale for environmental biology firms to use for mitigation and recovery projects.Tiburon-Mariposa Lily is a California threatened native plant that only occurs on a small area on Ring Mountain, Tiburon, Marin County, CA. This plant is threatened by extinction from a variety of causes such as fires, pests, competition with non-natives, drought and human-caused disturbances. Mitigating environmental disaster or population decline with a captive breeding colony can greatly improve conservation efforts for this species. Since this species only occurs on serpentine soils derived from ultramafic rock, captive culture of this can be extremely difficult. Additionally, collection of seeds or bulbs would violate the law, and threaten to diminish the already small population of this plant. Using the latest tissue culture techniques, this initiative plans to harvest small cuttings or seeds that would not harm the plant and cultivate them in the laboratory. Multiplication of clones would then provide a number of plants to experiment in creation of a captive breeding colony. Protocols generated from experimentation in cultivating plants in serpentine soils will be an open-source publication for other scientists to use to establish captive breeding colonies for plants occurring in serpentine soils.
