from Climate Connections
Photo: Lindsey Hoshaw/KQED
Imagine this: It’s nearly midnight and you’ve had to park about five blocks away from your apartment. This used to be an anxiety-producing ordeal, as you hated walking alone at night. Now, it’s no big deal thanks to the comforting light of the glowing trees planted on your street.
That’s right — glowing trees.
A recent post on Quest introduces audiences to Kyle Taylor, founder of Glowing Plants, which uses DNA from fireflies to engineer plants that emit an unnatural, eerie glow. Taylor hopes to begin selling seeds to the public by December 2014.
First of all, what environmental problem is this solving? Use of energy for light? Exactly how many of these faintly glowing ferns would need to fill a studio apartment to actually save energy? The Glowing Plants seem more like biological lava lamps than a proposed solution to the energy crisis.
Second, what is being done to prevent contamination? There is no mention of any research done to determine the potential effects Glowing Trees could have on plants and animals. Years from now will students in a biology class debate the ways to combat this evasive glowing species? How will these glowing plants effect nocturnal animals?
This project seems to ride on the coattails of the renewable energy platform, when in reality it’s little more than biotech decor. The priorities of this project seem to rest mainly in the idea that interfering with the genetic course set by nature is “cool and interesting.”
Glowing Plants? City Streets Lit by Trees
by Lindsey Hoshaw, QUEST Northern California, Oct 02, 2014In the basement of a startup lab in San Francisco, scientist Kyle Taylor stands in a dark, windowless room.
“I kind of like to have a big reveal,” he said, taking out a small plant that shined like a nightlight. The mouse-ear cress had been injected with firefly DNA so it emitted a soft green glow.
“It looks like it’s getting brighter, but actually your eyes are adjusting,” he said, “although one day we hope to make the plants emit more light.”
Taylor is the biotechnologist behind Glowing Plants, a synthetic-biology startup company that plans to sell engineered seeds to the public in December.
Read the full article here.
