Poll: Would you buy glowing plants?

[blazearmoru]

I'd love a plant that glows softly.

However like Chefsbrain, I originally saw 'Glow in the dark pants,' and had a great image of glowing spandex pants.

Perhaps the plants could be used to make pants?

:O great idea! Someone totally needs to try that!!!

Edit : I think... they stop growing when dead so cotton won't work too well. =x I'ma go look up some infos later when i get a chance.

 

[Dags90]

Ya realized that after posting. For some reason my sleep deprived brain equated the two. Still shouldn't be too hard though. They would just need to identify the luciferase pathway, and with any luck there won't be a lot of intermediates that the separate its substrates from something the plant already produces.

The substrates required for luciferase are ATP and O[sub]2[/sub], not exactly hard to come by in plants.

IDK how the planned goal of sending people media plates is going to work. Most people don't exactly have sterile hoods in their house and bacteria and fungi love media.

 

[NightHawk21]

Ya realized that after posting. For some reason my sleep deprived brain equated the two. Still shouldn't be too hard though. They would just need to identify the luciferase pathway, and with any luck there won't be a lot of intermediates that the separate its substrates from something the plant already produces.

The substrates required for luciferase are ATP and O[sub]2[/sub], not exactly hard to come by in plants.

IDK how the planned goal of sending people media plates is going to work. Most people don't exactly have sterile hoods in their house and bacteria and fungi love media.

Wikipedia reports the mechanism as:

- luciferin + ATP → luciferyl adenylate + PPi

- luciferyl adenylate + O2 → oxyluciferin + AMP + light

Which means the plant needs to make luciferin before the enzyme can initiate the reaction. You're going to need to introduce every gene from the fireflies that encodes any substrate that is intermediate between luciferin and something the plant has in the luciferin synthesis pathway.

As for the media. You could maybe send the media like vaccumm sealed although I'm not sure that would work. I would personally send the media in solid form, and tell people how to mix it. Include a bottle that you can then put in your oven for a few hours at 120+ degrees celsius as sort of a poor man's autoclave. To poor you really only need a flame if you're careful.

 

[blazearmoru]

Does anyone know how to make a terrarium? I'm planning to get the DIY kit and I want a glowing terrarium lol... or is it possible with the Arabidopsis plant?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

That's pretty cool, but I don't think it would survive that long with me. I just can't be arsed to take care of plants.