Glowing plants could light the streets of the future

A Kickstart project lead by biochemist Dr. Omri Avirav-Drory PhD, molecular biologist Dr. Kyle Taylor PhD and mathematician Antony Evans hopes to eventually replace traditional street lamps with a greener, more sustainable alternative: glowing ornamental plants. 

 

They were able to do this by splicing the luciferase gene from fireflies into ornamental plants like Arabidopsis and the rose. Luciferase is what gives fireflies the ability to generate light within their own bodies. Avrav-Drory got the idea of creating growing trees and plants as he was walking the streets of Tel-Aviv lined with trees and started imagining what it would be like to walk there at night with the trees glowing.

 

 

“Basically, this tech will have broad real applications,” said Evans in an ABC News report cited by Yahoo! News. “Plants and biology in general are very efficient at dealing with energy. Plants turn sunlight into energy that we eat every day. And so we could use those applications to approve the very nature of the world.”

 

This is not the first time that the luciferase gene has been spliced into other organisms. Since the luciferase gene has been sequenced in 1989, the gene has been spliced into a number of organisms from bacteria to plants, fish and mice. In fact, luciferase is regularly spliced into test organisms in research and is used as a “reporter” gene to determine whether a foreign gene introduced have successfully integrated into the test subjects DNA. 

 

Fireflies and other bioluminescent organisms normally don’t generate that much light. But the bioluminescence benchmark set by the iGem team from the University of Cambridge has proven that brightness of genetically engineered bioluminescent organisms can be controlled and intensified by maximizing gene expression. According to researchers’ Tumbler blog, they should be able to increase the glow produced by their plants by optimizing that metabolic pathways that produce luciferase, alter the gene to promote luciferase gene expression, and optimize the amount of luciferase the plants could produce.

 

This project, which is a collaboration of different researchers from the academe and the private sector, turned to crowdsourcing rather than research grants to fund their project. They campaigned heavily using Facebook and Twitter. They also have a Tumbler blog where anyone can read about share their results, progress and resources of the project, mostly in laymen’s terms. 

 

"We chose Kickstarter for a reason”, says Amirav-Drory. “We're trying to sell a story more than anything. Someone who doesn't know about biology but is excited about this field and wants to solve a problem, can. You find the right people, crowdsource the genetic design, crowdfund the project and go to a community lab and do something that people on the street would consider science fiction. This is part of the story that we are trying to tell."

 

Donors or backers can give as little as $1 to the project but those gave $25 will receive items related to the project. Those who donate at least $40 to through their Kickstart project can get seeds for their very own glowing Arabidopsis plants while those who donate $150 will get a glowing rose. While those who donate $90 will get a coffee table book that provides details about the project. They aim to raise $400,000 by June 7, 2013 and as of this writing, they have already received roughly $350,000 in funding.

 

However, the project is not without its detractors. Friends of the Earth US and Action on Erosion, Technology and Concentration have written to Genome Compiler to call for the Kickstarter project to be pulled, according to Wired. In their letter, they claimed that "widespread, random and uncontrolled release of bioengineered seeds... poses real world risks to the environment". 

 

Issues and problems with regards to this project were also expressed directly to the project leaders through their Tumbler blog. Critics argue that this project may not be completely legal and should be subject to regulation under the USDA/APHIS. The issue of cross-pollination and how this would affect native species was also raised. And like any project that involves splicing, genetic transformation (the genes not expressing in the level or capacity as it was expected) is always a possibility. 

 

In the Glowing Plant blog and Kickstart campaign page, the project leaders defended their campaign, assuring that they have been cleared by the USDA/APHIS. They also clarified that biology of Arabidopsis and rose makes cross pollination unlikely and they have designed the plants to underperform compared to native species. They also plan to address the possibility of genetic transformation by performing more experiments and refining their procedure to ensure that the plants will glow as they should. 

 

The only shortcoming they have, as far as Amirav-Drory is concerned is this, "The main problem with trees is, they take so damn long to grow." — TJD, GMA News