Firefly Petunia Glows in the Dark
Firefly Petunia: Glows in the Dark
Thanks to science and human ingenuity, that's set to change, according to a company called Light Bio. They just released their first glow-in-the-dark plant to the public: the Firefly Petunia.
The firefly petunia glows brightly and doesn’t need special food thanks to a group of genes from the bioluminescent mushroom Neonothopanus nambi. The fungus feeds its light-emitting reaction with the molecule caffeic acid, which terrestrial plants also happen to make. By inserting the mushroom genes into the petunia, researchers made it possible for the plant to produce enzymes that can convert caffeic acid into the light-emitting molecule luciferin and then recycle it back into caffeic acid — enabling sustained bioluminescence. Wood co-founded Light Bio with two of the researchers behind this work, Karen Sarkisyan, a synthetic biologist at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences in London, and Ilia Yampolsky, a biomolecular chemist at the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University in Moscow.
Firefly Petunia Glows in the Dark
Firefly Petunia: Glows in the Dark
Thanks to science and human ingenuity, that's set to change, according to a company called Light Bio. They just released their first glow-in-the-dark plant to the public: the Firefly Petunia.
The firefly petunia glows brightly and doesn’t need special food thanks to a group of genes from the bioluminescent mushroom Neonothopanus nambi. The fungus feeds its light-emitting reaction with the molecule caffeic acid, which terrestrial plants also happen to make. By inserting the mushroom genes into the petunia, researchers made it possible for the plant to produce enzymes that can convert caffeic acid into the light-emitting molecule luciferin and then recycle it back into caffeic acid — enabling sustained bioluminescence. Wood co-founded Light Bio with two of the researchers behind this work, Karen Sarkisyan, a synthetic biologist at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences in London, and Ilia Yampolsky, a biomolecular chemist at the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University in Moscow.