A wave of bioluminescent algae in California. © CC-BY-SA Mike Sauder
Bioluminescence is gaining traction among hackers. After cultivating bacteria or algae that naturally produce light, San Francisco-based Glowing Plant are about to launch their first genetically modified plant kit. And then there was bio light?
Plants that shine like in Avatar? Not quite… Naturally bioluminescent species produce only a faint glow, like stars. However, research in this field has greatly accelerated since the 1980s, becoming accessible to biohackers by 2010.
There are two ways to get light out of living things : cultivate naturally bioluminescent algae or bacteria, or modify the DNA of existing plants. The first option is relatively straightforward for anyone with a green thumb. Luminescent algae can easily grow in a cabinet with a UV lamp and timer. Once they reach a certain density, simply shake well to see them emit a soft bluish light. Nothing difficult from a technical standpoint, as this hourglass tutorial proves.
You can also cultivate bacteria in Petri dishes, which have the advantange of emitting a continuous light, but like algae, will only produce a faint glow. This tutorial uses these microscopic organisms to visualize water pollution.
A solution to this problem was found by a team of students from Cambridge University at iGEM 2010 (International Genetically Engineered Machine), the international competition for synthetic biology. By combining the DNA of two different species of fireflies, the young researchers successfully created a standard genetic BioBrick to code effective bioluminescence.
Building on this simplified process, Californian start-up Glowing Plant created a bacteria to make Arabidopsis—a small plant well known to biologists for its simple genome—glow. When the leaves are dipped in the bacterial solution, the luminescence gene is copied into the DNA of the submerged cells, which then quickly produce light.
Of course, this method also poses an ethical problem. Founded based on a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign (8,433 backers pledged $484,013 in 2013), Glowing Plant offers as a prize a kit for anyone to modify the plant’s genome. While they insist, supported by scientists, that their modified plant poses no threat to the environment, nothing prevents people from injecting a different gene into the plant’s DNA. A kit for wannabe wizards?
According to Glowing Plant, the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) does not want to regulate kits that do not contain genes that are resistant to antibiotics. However, the GMO debate in the U.S. rages on. If the first kits indeed see the light this autumn, no one can say for sure (not even the Glowing Plant biohackers) if the future will be increasingly regulated. To be continued…
Whatever the method, we’re still a long way from being able to replace city lights with plants, which is the proclaimed goal of the bioluminescent hackers. As research continues to accelerate since 2010, both researchers and biohackers may well manage to increase the luminosity of these organisms by several orders of magnitude.
More info on Glowing Plant website
See also this French project on urban biolighting (in french), from the Glowee university lab