Glowing Plants-Hope Of A Future Wonderland

What about glowing plants instead of the streetlights in your city streets? Think about having a cute green glowing plant on your study table instead of a lamp! Imagine a whole garden with glowing plants, flowers and grass. It's seems absolutely mythical! but not anymore_a plant from a wonderland is going to be designed by our marvellous scientists.

                                              A glowing plant model published by project team.

About the project

A team of Standford-trained PhDs have so far promised their backers for the delivery of seeds by next may. The scientist are raising funds for the completion of the mythical project. Backers and customers have already crowded the mythical market of their dream glowing plants. With a month still to go, the project has successfully raised $243,000, it's initial goal was $6500. Team leader and project manager Antony Evans said that DNA sequence for the project has been developed, the money will be used to print the sequence and insert it into a prototype and then grow it in the laboratory.

Inspiration and methodology

Nature has been the ultimate provider of amazing ideas to minds. The idea of glowing plants has been taken from the firefly. "Inspired by fireflies... our team of Stanford-trained PhDs are using off-the-shelf methods to create real glowing plants in a do-it-yourself bio lab in California," said project leader Antony Evans. The methodology includes the insertion of a florescent gene into a small plant called arabidopsis. The transfer process will be carried out by a type of bacteria called agrobacteria which are already widely used in biotechnology. Agrobacteria is able to transfer genes between itself and a plant.

The  idea is not new

The idea of glowing plants is not brand new rather it was discussed and even experimented so far. A team of scientist at the university of California had created a glowing tobacco in 2008. Followed by a team of scientist at Cambridge university who enabled a bacteria in 2009. But ideas make the difference and the new project is a step a head of the previous ones.

Known team members

• Antony Evans-Project Leader and manager.
• Omri Amirav-Drory-Synthetic biologist.
• Kyle Taylor-Plant scientist.
• George Church-Professor of genetics at Harvard University, backing the project.

What is irritating?
The irritating face of the project, specially for the backers is the lack of discussion on the project. Theo Sanderson, member of the 2010 project at Cambridge says,"Nobody can deny that the idea of walking down a path lit by glowing trees is pretty enticing... what has disappointed me has been the lack of discussion as to what the team actually plan to do with the funds raised, and whether the science stacks up".

More on the topic

• The glowing effect according to a researcher, will also be inserted into roses.
• An important component is Luciferase, an enzyme common in fireflies, glowing fungi and bacteria.
• The method used in DNA transplant is under the branch of science called 'Synthetic biology.

Ads code here