Glowing plants in nature. Business idea: glowing flowers. The price of materials and their consumption

The Hound of the Baskerville, with its glowing grin in the dark, brought to death Sir Charles Baskerville and almost killed Henry Baskerville in the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, was an ordinary dog. She shone only thanks to malice and phosphorus on the face. However, living organisms that glow in the dark on their own do exist.

Bacteria, jellyfish, molluscs, plankton, fireflies, scorpions, mushrooms (including the usual mushrooms). Today, scientists know more than eight hundred luminous living organisms. Most of them live in the seas and oceans. But scientists have not yet discovered representatives of the kingdom of Flora, which have the ability to bioluminescence. However, man is not accustomed to waiting for favors from Nature: if for some reason she “did not think of” making luminous plants, the “crown of creation” is ready to take on this matter himself.

Bioglow - the company behind the concept of the glowing plant

There are no glowing plants in nature, because plants do not need bioluminescence. In the microcosm, glow is a side effect of digestion: the neutralization of active oxygen by bacterial enzymes during the breakdown of glucose. Fireflies and small watazenia squids use light to attract partners, jellyfish - as a shock protection from those who try to eat them.

There are also hunters who attract their victims by the glow of their own bodies. And some species of deep-sea corals, according to scientists, are capable of transforming weak short-wave light that penetrates into the depths into brighter flares. This phenomenon is used as a phyto-light for the possibility of photosynthesis of symbiotic colonies of algae living in coral thickets.

Plants don't need to glow. Therefore, it took the intervention of genetic engineering, decades of work and a solid investment. Plant chloroplasts are semi-autonomous plastids that exist in symbiosis with plants. According to the hypothesis, they were once independent, like the chloroplast-related cyanobacteria, capable of luminescence. Alexander Krichevsky (St. Louis, USA) - a specialist in two areas: the study of the phenomenon of bioluminescence of marine bacteria and plant microbiology. The scientist had the idea of ​​combining two well-known disciplines, which he did, creating a biotechnology company "Bioglow, Inc.".

Starlight Avatar: the epitome of starlight

Alexander Krichevsky's company has created the concept of a glowing plant - "Starlight Avatar®".

The glow of the Starlight Avatar (tobacco plant) is based on the introduction into the plant genome of a part of the firefly gene - the luciferase molecule. For Starlight Avatar to glow, a catalyst is needed - the glow reaction occurs when luciferase is oxidized by oxygen in the presence of the enzyme luciferin. Luciferin was contained in the nutrient medium in which the plant was grown.

The glow of a new generation of genetically modified plants (left) compared to Starlight Avatar (right). Photo from the sitebioglowtech.com
In 2014, Bioglow sold twenty glowing Starlight Avatars growing in special containers at auction. While this light is very weak, but the laboratory of Alexander Krichevsky is working on increasing the brightness.

While - from the realm of fantasy

Bioglow plans to create plants that will not only decorate the landscape at night, but also help save on street lighting. But for now, luminous plants are from the realm of fantasy. Starlight Avatar emits light only when it is watered with an appropriate solution.

Russian scientists working on the study of bioluminescence and the creation of self-luminous plants in the laboratory of biomolecular spectroscopy of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Ilya Yampolsky believe that it is too early to plan flower beds in their areas, taking into account the roses or peonies glowing in the dark, and uprooting hedges to change it to glowing.

They call plant bioluminescence one of the most ambitious projects: “The ideal option, which no one has yet succeeded in, involves deciphering the entire pathway of luciferin biosynthesis, which can be a multi-step process involving a large number of proteins. Then - the insertion into the genome of another organism of genes encoding all these proteins and luciferase. At the moment, only the biosynthesis of bacterial luciferin has been deciphered, but this system is difficult to adapt to plants and animals. And the implementation of such an approach seems unlikely. "

Seeds of luminous flowers cannot be bought yet (unless, of course, you paid $ 40 for the hypothetical opportunity to get the seeds of the genetically modified Tal rezuhavidka in a crowdfunding project). But do not be discouraged: on the other hand, you can purchase artificial glowing stones - for decorating paths on your site, creating alpine slides that are visible in the dark, and even for decorating the facade of a house. Well, or as a last resort - at least for decorating an aquarium.

The idea of ​​scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Engineering was crowned with success and now there are plants that glow. With their help, streets will be illuminated.

American genetic engineers, together with nanotechnologists, have succeeded in breeding luminous plants. The experiments were carried out on samples of watercress or watercress, a semi-aquatic plant of the cabbage family.

To achieve a glow, the plants were injected with pigments-lucefirins, a special oxidizing enzyme similar to the genes of fireflies and luminous bacteria. These elements were transported into plant tissues using nano-particles of silicon. Once in plants, they react, as a result of which energy begins to be released and the plant glows.

Genetic modification and experimentation with genes has not been performed. Scientists went the other way and began to simply introduce the necessary particles into the plant. The plant is soaked in a solution, high pressure is created, and particles penetrate into the plant through micropores.

Of course, ethical questions arose immediately. Is it harmful to plants and does it disrupt their normal functioning? Scientists immediately assured eco-advocates that it was not harmful.

The composition of the introduced elements also includes a special coenzyme capable of removing harmful substances resulting from oxidation.

The use of glowing plants

Why did they come up with such a "miracle" - a plant and where can it help? There are no plants that glow in nature. Only a few living organisms have the ability to glow.

According to the idea of ​​the researchers, such plants were bred in order to use them to illuminate the streets at night without lanterns. Luminescent particles will circulate in the plant in such a way that they glow at night.

If the experiment is completely successful, then it will be possible to save on electricity. According to statistics, almost 20% of all produced electricity is spent on street lighting.

At this stage, this is impossible, and although the bred plants glow, they cannot fully replace the lighting devices. It is impossible to read under them without straining your eyes. While their light is enough to illuminate the path for pedestrians or even the carriageway.

The first samples glowed for only 45 minutes, then it was possible to achieve a 4-hour glow. Scientists want to achieve a result when plants will glow for their entire life. Plus, I would also like to simplify the delivery of reagents, and make something like a spray.

Scientists are gradually increasing the power of the glowing grass, and perhaps in the near future, the glowing grass will be able to become a full-fledged source of light.

As the object of "highlighting", the scientists chose the favorite model plant of geneticists - Tal's nondescript rezukhovidka Arabidopsis thaliana... If everything goes well with him, then at the next stage biologists promise to make the rose glow.

Interestingly, “biohackers”, as the press called them, do not need any permits to work. The authors of the project say that under US law, glowing plants are not subject to regulation: they are not intended for human or animal consumption, and the federal agricultural agency APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) is only interested in the method of introducing transgenes. If the genes of the luciferase system are introduced into the plant by a method that does not use pathogens (originally it was supposed to use conditionally pathogenic Agrobacterium), APHIS will not be able to interfere with the work of Evans and his colleagues.

She appeared, in addition to the specialized eco-activist press, in The Guardian. The most active of all was the Canadian organization ETC Group - it tried to organize a public campaign designed to put pressure on Kickstarter in order not to give funding to "biohackers".

It is difficult to say whether Evans and his associates will be able to overcome the resistance and deliver the seeds to the enthusiasts who supported the project on time. So far, it seems that they have a much better chance of this than AquaBounty with their long-suffering salmon. After all, "biohackers", unlike AquaBounty, Monsanto and other biotech companies, will have to fight not with the American bureaucracy in the form of the FDA, but with public opinion and eco-activists, who, fortunately or unfortunately, are not yet so powerful.

All fans of the movie "Avatar" must have paid attention to the amazing glowing plants of the jungle of Pandora. But now this is no longer a fantasy, more recently scientists have invented plants that can glow brightly at night.

First prototypes

The first such samples were obtained by Stephen Howell's team back in 1986. By genetically modifying common carrots and tobacco, they began to contain one luciferase (the area of ​​plants responsible for luminescence), but the plants lacked luciferin (the pigment that glows). The whole difficulty lay in the fact that in order to obtain luciferase, it was necessary to add a single gene to the DNA, but to obtain luciferin, a whole set of them was needed. As a result, plants that were created in this way required treatment with lucephirin or adding it to the soil. This can be seen from photographs of such plants, in which the roots and stems of tobacco shine much brighter, along which the glowing enzyme travels.

The first plant that could glow on its own was created only in 2010. Scientists from Israel and the United States have come up with a way to get plants to produce lucphyrin on their own. To do this, they added a gene from the bacteria Photobacterium leiognathi. In addition, the gene from the bacteria was inserted into the chloroplast gene, so that it could not be donated with pollen.

But such plants glowed slightly, to see the effect it was necessary to take photos with a long exposure. This situation was associated with the non-survival of genes in a foreign organism. Nevertheless, the creator of the technique for the production of luminous plants has registered a patent for them. Indeed, in order to continue the work and conduct a series of experiments, this was quite enough.

Step forward

Scientists do not even need to be fed if they are given the opportunity to attach luciferase to any gene in order to see how they begin to work and glow accordingly. This approach does not work like a dye, it produces pure natural light. Initially, it was not planned to apply the method of glowing plants for something chic, Only a group of Cambridge students came up with such an idea. In 2010, nine daredevils set out to create ornamental plants that will truly glow.

Young people introduced the enzyme to restore luciferin into the enzyme for the synthesis of luciferin (having overcome the difficulties of all previous developments), taking the genes of the firefly Luciola cruciata as a basis. We also made a number of improvements. As a result, a flask with bacteria was created, which gave enough light even for reading.

It glows!

The massive appearance of green fireflies was made possible by the meeting of Omri Amirav-Drori, entrepreneur Anthony Evans and geneticist Kyle Taylor. The plan they launched in San Francisco was a demonstration of the power of genetic engineering.

For their tests, the specialists chose their favorite plant, the Tal rezukovidka (Arabidopsis thaliana). It was a wild cabbage that had almost fully explored genetic potential. This plant was even launched into space on a Soviet station, and NASA plans to green the moon with it. The scientists' next step will be to create a glowing rose.

Since there was no need to expect support from the state, a group of specialists created a kickstarter project on the site that demanded about $ 60,000, but thanks to the popularity of the idea, the guys were able to collect more than $ 400,000. To everyone who helped in the development of the project financially, the scientists promised to send the seeds of plants that will grow and begin to glow.

Doubts of the "green"

What about conservationists? Initially, they responded well to such work. After all, if you plant a lot of glowing trees along the street, you can save a lot of electricity and reduce environmental pollution. Moreover, such plants could be incredibly beautiful additions for any interior or landscape design. But when it came to practice, the greens sounded the alarm.

According to some experts, the massive spread of luminous plants can lead to an uncontrolled release of GMO elements into the surrounding world. Everyone who helped the project could grow fireflies and there was no need to talk about any control over this. Moreover, the American government could not control such plants, since they were not used for food.

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Glowing plants

The glow of plants in the dark is a rather unusual phenomenon and not known to many. But if at the end of summer, after a warm rain, you find yourself in a rare mixed forest at night or in a clearing with old stumps of pine, spruce, birch, aspen or alder, where honey mushrooms have been collected many times, you can admire this fabulous picture with your own eyes. Take a closer look - and in the mysterious silence among the dark silhouettes of whispering trees in the darkness of a summer night, you will see magic "lights" glowing with phosphoric light. Try to hit the rotten piyu with a light hatchet or to chop off a thin layer of bark: how the sparks will fly to the sides of the "little" rot. At home, such a rotten does not glow for long.

On the exposed wood of such a rot, it is easy to notice black veins or branched dark brown "cords" (rhizomorphs) ending in thin whitish filaments - mycelium. This is a mycelium of widely known mushrooms that have settled on wood - an autumn or summer mushroom. In these mushrooms, it is not the cap or the leg that shines, but the mycelium, braiding the destroyed wood like a thin web. And it seems that the whole stump or rotten tree is glowing!

The spores of honey agarics in the soil are not afraid of a sharp change in temperature. In addition to fruiting bodies, growing rhizomorphs appear in the mycelium, which infect the roots of trees and through them pass to the trunks, rising to a height of 2.5-3 m (Fig. 12). The appearance of mycelium on a living tree (most often through injured bark) leads to the destruction of the wood and its death.

Rice. 12. Honey fungus on the trunk of a tree affected by its rhizomorphs

As you can see, these edible mushrooms not only provide pleasure in the form of freshly prepared or prepared food for future use, but also harm forestry.

There is information that in some cases another mushroom widespread in the Non-Black Earth Region has a luminescence - a real buttermilk, especially when its fruit body is already overripe and begins to collapse.

The water surface of vats and trays of flower pots in greenhouses and greenhouses are often covered with the so-called golden algae (Chromophyton Rosanoffii), visible only under a microscope, the zoospores of which give a spectacular golden glow under directional illumination. Due to the presence of a chromatophore in each zoospore and its ability to orient itself with the reflecting spherical surface in the direction of the light stream, the most intense glare occurs when the water mirror is viewed at the smallest acute angle to it. If you look at the water from above perpendicularly, the bloom of algae seems colorless and does not give shine at all. But this effect is no longer due to its own glow, but only due to the capture of light and its directional reflection.