WEST DANBY, Tompkins County — Scientists at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse are leading an effort to save the American chestnut from devastating blight using genetic engineering — also known as GE. They have inserted wheat genes that produce the enzyme oxalate oxidase, into chestnut tree cells. Trees grown from those cells are able to break down oxalic acid, which the chestnut blight fungus ordinarily uses to invade chestnut tissues and kill the trees. This alteration enables the GE trees to tolerate chestnut blight infections, whereas the trunks of wild American chestnut trees are nearly always killed.