I don’t see how these could possibly be bright enough to replace street lights.
I’ve been growing petunias bioengineered to bioluminesce for years, they were developed by a grad student and team in Idaho.
So. Did they do it in a new way?
How does this differ from the already developed technology utilizing the fungi growth pathway + firefly dna
Here’s an article about this from 2024
This is really interesting! I do have some questions if anyone know, though, since I’m very much not a biologist.
How does this affect the plants’ own photosynthesis? Would it be a more “efficient” plant (for lack of a better wording) in that some of the energy that is used for bioluminescence be captured by its own cells and converted into energy for the plant. Obviously, bioluminescence itself wouldn’t be enough and would still need supplemental light to function, but I’m curious on the effect.
Second, I’d imagine that bioluminescent plants would have a genetic leg-up on other plant species. Could this cause environmental issues and become a sort of invasive species? If used in society, would the plants have to be effectively sterilized?
Thanks!
My bioluminescent petunias can breed with other petunias and I’ve been trying to get the glow gene across BUT I think it’s a twofer mutation so relatively hard to “breed in” natively.
My petunias are not sterile, the USDA didn’t require them to be either.
Plants absorb light in the red/ blue areas of the spectrum and reflect green, so likely not much self-absorbtion
One theory (“purple earth”) is that simpler now extinct life used to use retinal for photosynthesis which uses the most abundant color in the suns emission spectrum, green light. This left only red and blue light which other organisms evolved to use (now plants). Retinal is fairly unstable and thus those organisms needed to use tons of energy just pumping out retinal to co tinue operating, while chlorophyll is relatively stable in comparison, so those organisms had higher net energy intake even with lower energy available in the red+blue areas of the spectrum since they expended less on just existing, and were able to grow and outcompete the purple counterparts.
For advantage, not necessarily- it could attract pests or animals that eat or damage it, resulting in it dying faster.
