

Glowing Plants: Natural Lighting with no Electricity - mhb
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit?ref=search

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shadowmint
I only have a layman's understanding of bioluminescence, but I was under the
impression that it:

1) Made the plants extremely frail and prone to die at the drop of a hat

2) Generated _extremely_ faint light levels, to the point where someone
specialized equipment is needed to see it.

3) Was usually generated by a short-burst chemical reaction in the organism
that was triggered somehow (eg. shake, tap, etc.) and had a rather short
chemical reaction life, after which it faded.

4) The organism required _significant_ time and nutrients to regenerate the
chemical 'glow cell'.

So, mark me as a skeptic this will produce anything particularly useful, but I
like the idea.

I'd be rather interested to see any links to science papers on things that
make any of (1)-(4) no longer an issue.

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technotony
Here's the paper:
[http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0015461)

~~~
shadowmint
> Indeed, when the fully grown, homoplastomic LUX-TrnI/TrnA plants were placed
> in a dark room, their glow was clearly seen after about _5–10 min of eye
> adjustment_ to darkness.

bright, I see, just like I remember. Still, looks promising~

~~~
technotony
This was a proof of concept to show that the plant would stay alive and could
express these molecules.

The project posted an update to discuss how to improve the light output:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-
plan...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-
natural-lighting-with-no-electricit/posts/468578)

Four things: 1\. Codon optimization 2\. Promotor selection 3\. Metabolic
engineering 4\. Gene Copy numbers

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DanBC
This has been on HN before. EDIT: Here it is. Turn on showdead to see
unfortunate over-enthusiastic support.
(<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5596212>)

It's cool to fund scientific noodling. I'm not sure this project really
describes the current state of glowing plants, or the amount of work needed,
adaquately. I guess that's a problem for people wanting bright glowing plants.

I'm also not sure if there's anything to know about the problems of glowing
plants might face. Plants use light for a bunch of regulation; things that
live in plants and trees use light for a bunch of their regulation. Having
glowing plants risks screwing that up.

The project owners have a problem with communicating what they've actually
done to a scientifically ignorant, fearful-of-anything-mentioning-DNA, public.

But yeah, glowing trees is probably cool

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zokier
No hints about the excepted light output which leads me to believe that they
intend only to make glowing plants that are mostly unsuitable for lighting
purposes. Sure it might be neat in the same way that a lava lamp is neat, but
it's still quite far from revolutionizing our lighting, which is what they'd
most likely want you to believe.

Also promoting heavily the idea that "Biology is sustainable" is disingenuous
at best.

~~~
prbuckley
I think this project is meant more as a proof of principle. You can't expect a
new technology to jump straight to better then what is commercially available
on day one. It can still hold a lot of promise for developing into something
better then what is available today. (disclosure: I am roommates with the main
guy behind this)

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samatman
Good ol' Arabidopsis! I performed a similar transfection in university, adding
blacklight-reactive proteins from jellyfish to A. Thaliana. Things to know:

Arabidopsis is small; in the lab, 10 cm is usual, though they can double this
size. It also has a short seed-to-seed cycle; those facts, and the simplicity
of the genome, were why it was chosen as the original botanical model
organism.

It's a fun project and the biosynthetic pathway should eventually be viable in
plants; it's reasonable to think we can achieve glow worm levels of
illumination, perhaps higher with further breeding.

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gz5
Very cool. Equally scary?

Ripple effects and unpredictable consequences as they (and other engineered
plants and animals) inevitably find their way into nature and impact second
and third level food chains and ecosystems.

Can't stop it - better to embrace and carefully manage - and the upside is of
course enormous.

~~~
technotony
The New York Times discusses the different sides to this project today:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/business/energy-
environmen...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/business/energy-
environment/a-dream-of-glowing-trees-is-assailed-for-gene-
tinkering.html?ref=technology&_r=0)

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Klinky
Doesn't the plant still need to produce energy to emit light? Won't that
energy have to come from somewhere? Soil nutrients and water require energy to
generate and transport.

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oneandoneis2
You know plants get their energy from sunlight, right..?

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Klinky
Water is used in photosynthesis. Nutrients are required to support the plant
so it can continue to grow and produce energy from the sun. The distribution
of water has it's own energy hungry pitfalls. Fertilizer production and
distribution also requires significant energy.

Water, fertilizer and maintenance costs are one of the big hindrances to
making biofuels net energy positive.

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aetherson
I would like to see some kind of source for the claim that lighting creates as
much CO2 as cars.

~~~
technotony
Lighting is 20% of global electricity:
<http://www.c2es.org/technology/overview/electricity>

Plus the 1% of lighting which comes from Kerosene lamps add's a further 20% to
this.

~~~
aetherson
I don't know where you're getting that claim from your link. It suggests that
in the US, residential lighting is .14 * .38 = 5.32% of electrical supply,
commercial lighting is .07 * .36 = 2.52% of electrical supply, and industrial
lighting is .22 * .26 = 5.72%, for a total of about 13.5%. As far as I can
tell, your link does not break down global electrical use.

Your link further claims that electrical generation accounts for 34% of
greenhouse gas emissions in the US, so .135 * .34 = 4.6% of all US greenhouse
gas emissions in the US would be lighting-related.

Transportation accounts for 27% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and your link
doesn't break down what percentage of that is "cars." But unless only 1/7th of
transportation CO2 emissions are from cars, lighting doesn't exceed it, in the
US.

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maresca
I would be pretty happy if I could make a room in my house look like a scene
from Avatar.

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prbuckley
This is my housemates project, glad to see it doing so well. Way to go Antony.

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ryandvm
It's really going to get interesting when somebody does a Kickstarter for
splicing the THC gene into tomatos...

