Genetically Modified Plants To Produce Natural Lighting 328
kkleiner writes "A team has launched a crowdsourcing campaign to develop sustainable natural lighting by using a genetically modified version of the flowering plant Arabidopsis. Using the luciferase gene, the enzyme responsible for making fireflies glow, the researchers will design, print, and transform the genes into the target plant. The project, which was recently launched on Kickstarter, has already raised over $100k with over a month left to go."
Mosquitos (Score:5, Funny)
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Combine that with laser pistols with enough umph to zap these shiny mosquitoes and then you have something entertaining, too.
Re:Mosquitos (Score:5, Insightful)
But how long before the gene dies out? Glowing mosquitoes make easy targets. Unmodified ones will have a distinct genetic advantage.
Re:Mosquitos (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, it will keep working in countries where evolution is just a theory.
Bert
Re:Mosquitos (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just say NO to GMO (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just say NO to GMO (Score:5, Funny)
This is GMO I can truly appreciate. Of course, I would also support development of gigantic venus-flytraps that are self-mobile...
Re:Just say NO to GMO (Score:4, Funny)
So long as we're at this, do it to cows also. Not for the burgers, rather the milk. THC bearing cheese on the burgers, and THC milkshakes. (Talk about happy cows.)
Then you could make a fast food place specializing in stoner food.
I can imagine so many bad jokes along these lines, but I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
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I don't think you're going to find grasses that get sexually frustrated enough to really get down to business and secrete the juice.
THC grows best exactly where it already is. If you were thinking something more oozie, you'd be on the right track... A Peony ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paeonia_(plant) [wikipedia.org] ) seems like a more obvious choice to myself.
Re:Just say NO to GMO (Score:5, Interesting)
At some point in the not too distant future technology will advance enough for a grad student to transplant the gene to produce THC into some other plant. I vote for <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae> Glowing plants are just the beginning.
"At some point in the not too distant future technology will advance enough for a grad student to transplant the gene to produce THC into some other plant."
Umm, yea, no. You need certain structures to produce THC, and thus your chosen plant would fail pretty miserably.
The closest plant you could even remotely think of transplanting the gene into would be the Tomato, which produces capitate-stalked trichomes, a structure essential for the production of THC.
Re:Just say NO to GMO (Score:4, Interesting)
You need certain structures to produce THC
No, you need certain enzymes to produce THC. Enzymes which happen to live in certain structures in Cannabis. The same enzymes would produce THC just as readily in a tube as in a trichome, and there's no reason to expect they wouldn't if transfected into algae.
Re:Just say NO to GMO. For Tinuctup, anyway... (Score:4, Funny)
How many of you immediately thought of Slaver Sunflowers?
(Ref: Larry Niven "Known Space" series. If you haven't read it, do...)
Re:Just say NO to GMO (Score:5, Funny)
One way to find out.
And you just added something to my list of things to try.
Re:Just say NO to GMO (Score:4, Funny)
Watching AC shit?
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Going to Hell in a (brightly lit) Handbasket (Score:5, Funny)
While I think this is pretty cool and all (Avatar anyone?), once people get a hold of the fact that the enzyme is called 'Luciferase', things could get rather warm for the company (at least in the US).
Re:Going to Hell in a (brightly lit) Handbasket (Score:5, Informative)
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Surprisingly, there's a "Morningstar Christian Bookstore" near where I go for "big-city" shopping.
They've been there a while, so probably nobody knows/cares.
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Re:Going to Hell in a (brightly lit) Handbasket (Score:5, Informative)
Lucifer, the Light-Bringer, the Morning Star, also known as The Fallen One, Satan, and the Devil.
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Re:Going to Hell in a (brightly lit) Handbasket (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Going to Hell in a (brightly lit) Handbasket (Score:5, Funny)
The name is derived from Lucifer, the root of which means 'light-bearer' (lucem ferre).
Wait... So, God allegedly says "Let there be light", and it's Satan that makes the Sun? The single most important object of this corner of the Universe? Not just one of them, but he's apparently done such a good job of the "light bringing" that there are billions upon billions of suns to chose from -- variety being the spice of life, and all that. Yeah, I'd be pissed at my boss too if he ignored the beauty of that master piece and instead went all gushy over a bunch of insignificant ungrateful chemical reactions on a single wet rock; That's like giving the GUI designer praise for a stable kernel and file system. Oh, hey, I know, Let's cast the insubordinate angel down into the thing he hates most -- Nevermind him having the power to create Stars, all of 'em -- instead of oh, I don't know, giving him his own different wet rock and saying, "Well if you're so damn smart then let's see YOU make some life"; No, the prickish boss of the Universe wouldn't want to give anyone else the chance to outshine them, eh?
Seems to me Satan's just under appreciated, and the fact the world still exists would point to a god-like degree of restraint or at least pity for said mentally midgetized primates -- I mean, it's not their fault they exist. I can't fault the guy for tripping up the little hairless apes whenever the opportunity presents itself to point out just how fickle and stupid they are -- I mean, what the fuck else did God expect to happen? Seems a bit of a dumb thing to do, IMO, unless you WANT the humans to wind up on the short end of the morality stick.
Well, I guess you can't blame the writers since they hadn't invented the terms "plot hole" or "antagonist sympathy" yet and thus had to rely on the oldest plot-hook in the book, "irrational demonization". No wonder new UFO religions are springing up; I mean, if there's a market for origin stories this bad then ANYONE could weave a more believable tale and make a fortune.
Re:Going to Hell in a (brightly lit) Handbasket (Score:4, Informative)
Wait... So, God allegedly says "Let there be light", and it's Satan that makes the Sun?
No, before you launch into a long post... to late I guess.
"Lucifer" is an old name for the morning star (Venus). When Isaiah speaks of how Lucifer has fallen from heaven, he referred to a Babylonian king who was nicknamed or identified with the morning star. Although it etymologically can be read as light-bringer, the conflation with the myth of Prometheus is a much, much later invention.
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once people get a hold of the fact that the enzyme is called 'Luciferase', things could get rather warm for the company (at least in the US)
We could simply rename the enzyme.
I'm sure something like 'Obamase' would solve the problem.
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once people get a hold of the fact that the enzyme is called 'Luciferase', things could get rather warm for the company (at least in the US)
We could simply rename the enzyme. I'm sure something like 'Obamase' would solve the problem.
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Could we rename the enzyme? Yes we can.
Thank you, and I'm not even an American...
Re:Going to Hell in a (brightly lit) Handbasket (Score:5, Interesting)
We could simply rename the enzyme.
Hey, it worked for Rapeseed oil: when they cultivated it, they renamed it Canola oil.
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Worked in the other direction as well. People would never have stood for illegalizing such a common and useful plant as hemp. Rename it as marijuana and demonize it and no problem illegalizing one of the most useful plants on the planet.
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am i the only one here watching non-nerdish office comedies? this to me seems to be direct copy of idea here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1479423/ [imdb.com] where phil and lam try to use this same idea to put firefly genes into plants (only side effect being the squirrel eating those plants died as she cannot sleep in that light)
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You don't get out much, do you?
Sustainable? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Energy will come from sun, so the idea is basically to store it as ATP and/or glucose, and release it as light using luciferase. Is it efficient? More efficient than solar cell/battery/LED? At least it has a point: this energy storage system will need no rare element, and it will be disposable without generating any solution.
I meant pollution, no solution.
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with that same logic, there's only so much you can pollute.
Re:Sustainable? (Score:5, Informative)
These stuff are just decoration, they glow nicely but don't produce enough light to illuminate anything.
Re:Sustainable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sustainable? (Score:4, Interesting)
I was wondering what effect the light might have, but from my rudimentary knowledge, if the light emitted was in the green wavelengths I think it wouldn't matter?
From what I can remember, I believe plants are normally stimulated into vegetative growth by light in the blue wavelengths, and into flower by light in the red wavelengths (or lack of if nocturnal flowering? is that right? I can't remember). Although this differs for some species (such as those that live in water) for the most part it remains true and would for something like Arabidopsis. I was under the impression though that green wavelength light has no effect on them.
Do you know if this is the case? or could green wavelength light still potentially cause etiolation in them?
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Exactly. Luciferase requires lots of substrate to make lots of light. Chances are they will make very little... Actually, chances are three kickstarter money will fund some poor research that scoresby achieve anything but feed a few unemployed scientists.
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Maybe the illumination should come from bacteria, held inside biopanels? When the nutrients are low the panels would light up to say feed me!
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I'm not sure I want to decorate my home with a green-yellowish glow. I think they are more like novelty items. Very cool, but no practical purpose and no aesthetic value.
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Except they'll die because they don't get enough sunlight to grow. These are cool novelties, not practicalities.
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Why would efficiency be a concern?
Plant seeds, get a plant that stores energy of the sun to light up the paths at night.
Where is the efficiency issue? How could manufacturing a battery and solar cell possibly compete with growing a self replicating plant.
There may be a ecological concerns, but efficiency isn't even an issue.
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There may be a ecological concerns, but efficiency isn't even an issue.
It is if you want to have useful lighting. If the plant is too inefficient then it will not be able to produce enough enzyme to create a useful light.
Re:Sustainable? (Score:4, Funny)
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I believe "dead" is the clinical term for innificient organisms,
Not necessarily. Some organisms live at the edge of sustainability, but most have plenty of slack to be somewhat inefficient.
Re:Sustainable? (Score:5, Informative)
Photosynthesis is pretty lousy in terms of thermodynamic efficiency. About 1% of the light that hits a plant is converted to useful chemical energy. The plant will have to use most of that energy for its metabolic processes. Luciferase itself is a very efficient enzyme, however, so I'll generously assume that 10% of the energy that the plant captures can be turned into useful light. So the overall efficiency can't be much higher than 0.1%. By comparison, solar cells are around 10% efficient, and LEDs 20%, so at first glance the luciferase plant seems to be an order of magnitude less efficient than the solar powered flashlight my in-laws gave me for christmas.
In absolute terms, there is about 100 watts/meter^2 of energy in sunlight. If you've got a one-square-meter window full of the hypothetical plants sitting in sunshine all day, let's say they can absorb 1500 watt-hours, and then convert 1.5 watt-hours into useful light. That'd be comparable to running a 5-watt LED for an hourish, which could be useful if you could turn the luminescence on and off at will. But if the plant is glowing all night and only a portion of the light is emitted in a useful direction, maybe the window-full-of-plants would give off light comparable to the little cluster of LEDs on the front of my computer. So overall I'd say that the idea is not completely impossible, but still totally impractical.
Re:Sustainable? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Let me know when you can grow a solar panel, batteries, charge controller and an LED from a seed.
Efficiency is irrelevant if the components are cheap/renewable and the input power would be wasted anyway.
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Doesn't matter how cheap it is if you can't actually do anything useful with it.
Re:Sustainable? (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is that you pay to grow one plant, then it replicates on its own until you have millions of them. So you pay for the first plant, then the rest are essentially free. Solar cells and LED bulbs OTOH don't grow on trees - you're paying the same high fixed cost to manufacture each panel or bulb.
And if you think about it, what's hindering wide-scale PV and LED adoption right now? High up-front costs.
The solar constant [wikipedia.org] (energy flux of sunlight at Earth's orbit) is about 1360 W/m^2. A bit more than half of that reaches the earth's surface - about 750-800 W/m^2 (the rest being absorbed by the atmosphere). The 125 W/m^2 commonly quoted is the power output of widely-available 15% efficient PV panels under ideal condditions at the Earth's surface.
Re:Sustainable? (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that you pay to grow one plant, then it replicates on its own until you have millions of them. So you pay for the first plant, then the rest are essentially free.
Tell that to Monsanto [wikipedia.org].
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Yeah, but, admit it, it's a fun project.
why not classical cloning? (Score:2)
Kickstarter for government kickbacks? (Score:2)
Poor choice (Score:2)
You want a good plant to turn into a night-light? Go for something like a Chlorophytum, aka the Spider Plant. Lots of surface area, grows fast, impossible to kill (My cats chew one of mine back to the dirt every few weeks, and for three years that thing still keeps trying to come back)...
Instead, they want to modify something
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I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I think they should try Himalaya Blackberries. They're all over already - cities could save lots of money that currently goes to street lighting.
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Having those blackberry vines around would soon mean you would have no passable street s left. They would cut your children to ribbons on the way to school.
I think you would want an evergreen species anyway, not something that drops its leaves in the dark months.
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heh, I was thinking exactly the same thing - glowing spider plants could be put all over a house/hut/office plaza. Don't feel like watering it for a couple weeks? No problem.
Re:Poor choice (Score:5, Informative)
I imagine that they started with a Brassica because it's one of the most common experimental plants, and there's more genetic information available on it vs. most houseplants. Proof of concept work is best done in a thoroughly understood system, and if you're adding a gene from another phylum, knowing a lot about the organism you are working with helps to control for some variables.
However, I love the idea of a hardier plant with high leaf area!
(I admit to fanciful imaginings of a calm voice announcing, "In the event of a blackout, low level emergency lighting will be noticeable in street-side shrubbery.")
Re:Poor choice (Score:5, Informative)
Probably because Arabidopsis is one of the most well studied plants in terms of its genetics, and, thus, easier than other plants to genetically modify.
Re:Poor choice (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Poor choice (Score:4, Interesting)
No one is asking the obvious question (Score:4, Interesting)
How do you control this thing? Normal lights running off electricity can be turned on and shut off with a power switch. If you are going to engineer a whole plant to be a light source, what mechanism will you use to activate and deactivate the enzymatic process? One that is cheap, reliable, and convenient? Always on may be convenient in certain situations, but still wouldn't you want a way to control it? One can well imagine this kind of think wreaking havoc for astronomers (both amateur and professional) who have always fought tough battles against light pollution of the night sky. This can become a nightmare if such plants start growing near prime observation locations.
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Seriously? You rip out your light fixture every night before you go to sleep?
Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Say goodbye to Earthbound astronomy.
$10,000 Pledge (Score:5, Funny)
Your name (or anything under 30 characters) will be written, in DNA, into the glowing plant genome!!
Just imagine if it was your name that caused the plant to produce an airborne toxin that caused the end of the world. (I'd blame my parents.)
Question (Score:2)
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bright future for gardeners! (Score:2)
Franken Bulbs and Glowing Mustard! Run! (Score:5, Funny)
Aren't they worried the pollen will drift and crossbreed with our all natural compact flourescents?
And they're doing it with mustard plants, Mandrake! Mustard for childrens hot dogs!
Natural? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that means what they think it means.
US only (Score:2)
Seeds will be shipped within the USA only!
Way to make it a global initiative..
turn the light off (Score:5, Interesting)
Natural (Score:2)
If the plant is genetically engineered, can it still be called natural?
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That could be really popular! Imagine an electric fence that's just a bush! :D
There's a whole Bioluminesence Community? (Score:2)
anyone in the Sunnyvale, CA area can meet up with the team at the Bioluminesence Community meetups at BioCurious
Curious .. yes. Bio Curious? Not sure, but I must admit to being cautious about attending.
Some relevant biology... (Score:5, Informative)
Adding the Luciferase gene is fine and dandy. But to get the plant to glow, it also has to produce the appropriate luciferin. The photo they use of a glowing tobacco plant was produced by watering the tobacco with luciferin solution and then using a very long exposure. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Glowing_tobacco_plant.jpg)
That said, the luciferin found in dinoflagelates is derived from chlorophyll (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciferin) and it is conceptually possible to introduce the relevant algae genes into their plant... once the genes have been identified. This sort of metabolic engineering is a MUCH bigger task than the Kickstarter campaign people are planning for.
The energetic difficulty could be worked around by making the plant into a biological capacitor... where it builds up luciferin all day and then discharges in a flash at night. The plants wouldn't be of any use in landscape lightly, but they would be a really cool landscape feature. The downside is they might drive any local fireflies insane.
Ok, What? (Score:2)
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Did you ever drink the contents of a glowstick when you were a a kid?
I'll give you three guesses as to the source material for their development.
Re:energy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Luciferase genes are common throughout nature. Not just fireflies. It's just where they were studied from first. There's no heat produced - it's essentially the most efficient light source we know of. Far more efficient that anything we can manufacture. The actual reaction is not terribly different from one of those plastic glow sticks, just a biological form of it.
The only problem I see is that I just can't see how it's going to be very bright. I remember a classroom demo where the professor took purified luciferase and the reactants you need, and it lit up and glowed for a while, but petered out pretty quickly. The bio reaction is ATP-dependant, so having a plant with a bright light is going to have to consume tons of energy that the plant would rather be using to maintain normal processes.
Re:energy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, my first thought was that it's not going to be very bright. I did a back of the envelope calculation.
According to Wikipedia photosynthesis efficiency is about 3 to 6% of incoming sunlight. Lets call it 4.5%. That's the energy a plant uses to grow and just to keep itself alive - lets assume we can burn about half of that energy for light production without starving the plant itself. In fireflies Lucifer is about 90 to 98 efficient in converting energy into light. Lets say out engineered plant manages 90%. Next let's note that this plant is going to waste energy glowing even during midday sun. That basically cuts in half (or less) the amount of useful energy spend on blowing at night in the dark. Next let's note that the light is going to be generated inside the plant, but only a portion of it will make it out and be visible. The rest will hit internal plant tissue and be absorbed (remember, the very purpose of leaf tissue is to be a good absorber of light). The fraction of light that usefully escapes is hard to estimate, but lets call it 50%.
At this point we're down to about 1/200th.
Peak direct visible sunlight is about 440 watts per square meter. Average from sunrise to sunset will be less than half that. And with the 1/200th factor above we're looking at less than 1 watt of light output per square meter. (Note that we don't need to mess with the leaf surface area, we only need to consider the 2-D cross-section of the plant intercepting the available sunlight.)
The good news is that at this point in our calculation our wattage gets translated into light as if it's 100% efficiency. This means that a modest size BUSH that's 1 meter (or 1 yard) in diameter could, optimistically, glow at night with the equivalent light output of a 20-watt to 40-watt incandescent bulb.
That's probably close to the high end of what's possible, and I doubt their first attempt will be that good, but it is more than I expected. If you have good night vision, and if you sat right up against a bush, it may be just enough to (uncomfortably) read by. If all you have is typical size potted plant you'll only get a tiny fraction of that much light though.... maybe 5% of that.
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Re:No more GMO! (Score:5, Insightful)
These bastards are going to eventually kill the human race. GMO corn, wheat, canola, etc...is already in the food supply. Go to google and type in "gmo tumors" or "gmo infertility" to research for yourself.
Yup, I sure did. In all the whack-a-doodle sites, it was ZOMG You eat this shit and ye shal surely DIE. DIE a Horrible Tumor infested death!
Oh...... Wait..... CRIIGEN, an organization devoted to lobbying against GMOs Guaranteed to be honest and report only the truth.
Oh...... Wait...... The "researchers" Joel de Vendomois, is a homeopath, Seralini is the other scientist.
Yup, Homeopathy, that's the ticket.
By golly, this is sounding a lot like the anti-vaccine crowd, first degree murderers in my book.
Especially fun is that the Rats that they fed the fucking roundup pesticide live longer than any of the other rats.
Why don't you take up something with more credibility - like creation science.
Re:No more GMO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you read the Forbes article [forbes.com] and are just repeating what they said.
Especially fun is that the Rats that they fed the fucking roundup pesticide live longer than any of the other rats.
Just because they didn't get cancer from drinking the pesticide doesn't mean the pesticide-resistant GMO crops are safe.
And that's really the problem with GMO, testing sucks. There are very few, if any, meaningful and rigorous tests. Lots of short term test and tons of grandfathering in genes because they came from other organisms where they were not a problem. But when it comes to comprehensive testing that could reassure the general population of the safety of GMO crops, there just isn't any.
Given the history we have with things like thalidomide, DDT, leaded gasoline, fen-phen, etc it is not unreasonable that people be genuinely concerned about GMO crops, especially given how widespread they've become with such little public notice. Dismissing those concerns as the equivalent of creation science is at least as bad as creationism itself because it is just another misplaced faith.
Re:No more GMO! (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's impossible to "reassure the general population". See the anti-vaccine movement for proof of this. The general population will, in general, believe FUD. But Slashdot doesn't have to.
Given the history we have with things like thalidomide, DDT, leaded gasoline, fen-phen, etc it is not unreasonable that people be genuinely concerned about GMO crops, especially given how widespread they've become with such little public notice.
How widespread do they have to be, and for how long, before we stop hearing non-specific FUD about them?
And why are we talking about "GMO crops" instead of a specific GMO plant? Which one is the evil one? What did it do wrong? Why are all the other GMO plants guilty by association?
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It's impossible to "reassure the general population". See the anti-vaccine movement for proof of this.
Well, as long as there is a pre-determined outcome, there is no point in trying, right?
Re:No more GMO! (Score:4, Informative)
Especially fun is that the Rats that they fed the fucking roundup pesticide live longer than any of the other rats.
Just because they didn't get cancer from drinking the pesticide doesn't mean the pesticide-resistant GMO crops are safe.
Roundup is an herbicide, not a pesticide. While I wouldn't go drinking a shot of the stuff, it's pretty safe to people in the grand scheme of things.
Re:No more GMO! (Score:4, Informative)
What are you talking about? They didn't 'grandfather in' any of the genes inserted into crops.
I'm talking about the concept of "substantial equivalence" [wikipedia.org] which presumes that genetic modification is equivalent to selective breeding and thus any significant testing is unnecessary. Even when there is no way one could selectively breed a gene across species the way GM engineering transplants them.
Safety testing is at best limited to comparing changes in the level of certain chemicals that already exist in the original version of the plant with no requirement to look for new substances in the new plant.
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-05-26/news/mn-144_1_genetic-engineering [latimes.com]
While I am sure there are some anecdotal tests that go above and beyond the level of treating genetic modification as selective breeding, the fact that the minimum requirements are basically non-existent is the issue of concern.
My personal experience with "substantial equivalence" is in the software world where many government defense contracts use it as an out to avoid rigorous testing of patches and point-releases but still retain various levels of certification. It only works through sheer luck in that world, I don't expect it to work any better with GM foods.
Re:No more GMO! (Score:5, Funny)
Go to google and type in "gmo tumors" or "gmo infertility" to research for yourself.
Wow. While I was at it, I googled "measles and autism" and "moon landing hoax."
After all, they can't put anything on the Internet if it isn't true. [youtube.com]
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My guess is it's hard to get fish to glow bright enough to actually produce meaningful lighting.