6 ms·

I'm one of the founders of this project, and will be available to answer any questions you have.

lliwta 12y ago
What general techniques are you using? Perhaps another way to put it: which Wikipedia article is most related to your methodology?
- technotony 12y ago
  We use a broad range of technologies: 1. We start with protein engineering to improve the function of the enzymes which make the glowing reaction. We are using a process called directed evolution to achieve this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_evolution 2. Then we recode the genes coding for our enzymes so that they can be read by plants - here we test a large number of combinations. This uses a whole suite of technologies: Genome Compiler software to design the sequence, DNA synthesis of the parts, DNA assembly using transcriptics and then transient experiments to test the DNA sequence in plants as described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agroinfiltration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agroinfiltration 3. Finally when we have a DNA sequence which is working well we insert that into the plant germline (so that it's inheritable) using a gene gun:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_gun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_gun
  - micro_cam 12y ago
    How much control does the gene gun process give you over where the new sequence ends up? Is it in the same place in all of your production seeds or do they structurally differ? I guess a related question is if all the seeds come from one ancestor cell where the insertion was done or if you do the insertion multiple times? (I work with human genetics and am fascinated by the prevalence of structural variation.)
    - technotony 12y ago
      The gene gun inserts randomly. We do a large number of insertions and will then test to see which are the best plants and take those forward to production. All the seeds shipped will however come from a single parent.
Axsuul 12y ago
How bright is the glow?
- technotony 12y ago
  At the moment it's comparable to glow-in-the-dark paint, imagine those stars many people had on their ceiling as kids. we are working on improving the luminosity however, we are improving it about 10-25% per week using a process known as directed evolution.
  - aetherson 12y ago
    Aren't there some pretty fundamental physical limits here? This wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb claims that the luminous efficiency of a low-wattage incandescent bulb is maybe in the neighborhood of 1%. So that suggests that to get as much light as a 25 watt incandescent bulb, assuming that your plant is perfectly converting input energy to light output, you'd need to be continuously burning 0.25 watts. Can a plant possibly metabolize or store that much energy for long?
    - technotony 12y ago
      Bioluminescense is known as cold-light because it's so efficient - basically zero energy is wasted as heat. There will be fundamental limits (currently unknown), most likely from toxicity or waste products hurting the cells, but we are far from pushing those boundaries yet.
      - dekhn 12y ago
        Right, but a good first order estimate woudl be to take the brighest bioluminenscent molecule, pack it in a sphere with volume = your plant, and compute lux at 3 meters. Or something like that. Without growing lensing structures or other ways to focus/point light, the r3 falloff is gonna kill you.
        12y ago
kayhi 12y ago
Congrats! Send Kyle a high five for us, it's been awesome watching your progress!
stonemetal 12y ago
What plants are you working with? Are they pet and kid safe? Even at your current brightness levels it could make a cool nightlight for kids, as long as it doesn't kill them or the cat.
- technotony 12y ago
  We work with Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis is not very tasty but is not toxic either.
highCs 12y ago
Do you have pictures of glowing plants? (just been able to see 2 lowres photos so far)
- technotony 12y ago
  Here you go (note this is a 30 second exposure): http://cdn.optimizely.com/img/536610845/38f49c2ac92c415d824b8c28816f2ccd.png http://cdn.optimizely.com/img/536610845/38f49c2ac92c415d824b...
  - dnautics 12y ago
    Is that with or without luciferin added?
viggity 12y ago
is your plant hybridized, or do you plan on developing hybrids to increase vigor after you've gotten the glow bright enough? You said elsewhere that you're increasing brightness 10-25% per week, which seems crazy fast. How fast do your plants reach maturity?
- technotony 12y ago
  Increased luminosity per week comes from protein engineering the pathways in bacteria. We then test those improvements in plant leaves, which takes about four weeks, before inserting the full DNA in a plant which is the slow part which takes 6 months.
seszett 12y ago
Will you eventually ship seeds overseas?
- technotony 12y ago
  We certainly hope so. Due to the divergence of regulations in different countries it will be on a country by country basis, most likely starting with Canada and Asia.
kourt 12y ago
How do you guarantee that this DNA will not get released into the wild, and what is your responsibility for the consequences if it does?
- sampo 12y ago
  > How do you guarantee that this DNA will not get released into the wild, and what is your responsibility for the consequences if it does? Don't be silly. It's only in movies that monsterous mutations appear. What consequences could this kind of useless, extra metabolical burden (luminescence) have? It would quickly disappear in nature.
- johnpmayer 12y ago
  Honestly I wouldn't be upset if the truth was none and none. May as well be happening in the open. edit: If I got these I'd be breeding it with all sorts of other close species; see what sticks.
- api 12y ago
  Not the op, but I have an answer to this. This plant is wasting energy by glowing. It serves no purpose that enhances the plant's fitness outside of a human environment. If it were released into the wild, chances are it would lose out in natural selection vs wild competitors. The same is true of most human domesticated species, most of which are effectively genetically engineered through ages of selective breeding. Picture dogs vs wolves, cows vs wild buffalo, etc.
  - technotony 12y ago
    Exactly, the plant is not being given any kind of selective advantage and the genes in fact incur a metabolic cost on the plant so it will lose out to natural selection. The domesticated analogy is a great one, plus remember we took the genes from the wild in the first place!
    - gone35 12y ago
      Exactly, (...) Seriously? As the CEO of the company and the person ultimately responsible for this project, it is troubling that you endorse these simplistic and erroneous views of plant biosafety. Fitness is notoriously ecosystem-dependent and hard to predict, which is why microcosm and field experiments-based risk assessments exist in the first place --it unfortunately can't just be eyeballed from a simple metabolic account like that. And either way there is the additional risk of transgene flow, which is even more long-term and less understood --especially for such relatively distant horizontal transfers. You might have (unaccountably) skirted APHIS regulation, but that doesn't mean you don't have an ethical obligation to (1) thoroughly assess the biosafety of these plants; and (2) be frank in communicating these risks (and their uncertainty) to the public, even if they do not make as clean of a narrative as one would like.
craigyk 12y ago
I've wanted to do this since I saw a picture of a glowing tobacco plant in my biology textbook back in 1995. I've since done quite a bit of research on it, and there are some pretty serious obstacles. I assume you want to use luciferase... are you going to insert the whole enzymatic pathway? or sell "glowing plant fuel"? How do you get around the fact that this uses quite a bit of the plant's energy? Are you planning on attaching promoters that hack into the plant's day/night cycle? or seasonal changes?
- Alex3917 12y ago
  For what it's worth, it's trivially easy to grow your own bioluminescent fungi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bioluminescent_fungi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bioluminescent_fungi They don't last as long as the plants, but if you get the right ones then you can eat them once you're done.
simonebrunozzi 12y ago
Hey - if you are in the Bay Area, I'd like to see them in person. simone brunozzi at gggmmail.

What general techniques are you using? Perhaps another way to put it: which Wikipedia article is most related to your methodology?

technotony 12y ago
We use a broad range of technologies: 1. We start with protein engineering to improve the function of the enzymes which make the glowing reaction. We are using a process called directed evolution to achieve this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_evolution 2. Then we recode the genes coding for our enzymes so that they can be read by plants - here we test a large number of combinations. This uses a whole suite of technologies: Genome Compiler software to design the sequence, DNA synthesis of the parts, DNA assembly using transcriptics and then transient experiments to test the DNA sequence in plants as described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agroinfiltration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agroinfiltration 3. Finally when we have a DNA sequence which is working well we insert that into the plant germline (so that it's inheritable) using a gene gun:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_gun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_gun
- micro_cam 12y ago
  How much control does the gene gun process give you over where the new sequence ends up? Is it in the same place in all of your production seeds or do they structurally differ? I guess a related question is if all the seeds come from one ancestor cell where the insertion was done or if you do the insertion multiple times? (I work with human genetics and am fascinated by the prevalence of structural variation.)
  - technotony 12y ago
    The gene gun inserts randomly. We do a large number of insertions and will then test to see which are the best plants and take those forward to production. All the seeds shipped will however come from a single parent.

Axsuul 12y ago

How bright is the glow?

technotony 12y ago
At the moment it's comparable to glow-in-the-dark paint, imagine those stars many people had on their ceiling as kids. we are working on improving the luminosity however, we are improving it about 10-25% per week using a process known as directed evolution.
- aetherson 12y ago
  Aren't there some pretty fundamental physical limits here? This wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb claims that the luminous efficiency of a low-wattage incandescent bulb is maybe in the neighborhood of 1%. So that suggests that to get as much light as a 25 watt incandescent bulb, assuming that your plant is perfectly converting input energy to light output, you'd need to be continuously burning 0.25 watts. Can a plant possibly metabolize or store that much energy for long?
  - technotony 12y ago
    Bioluminescense is known as cold-light because it's so efficient - basically zero energy is wasted as heat. There will be fundamental limits (currently unknown), most likely from toxicity or waste products hurting the cells, but we are far from pushing those boundaries yet.
    - dekhn 12y ago
      Right, but a good first order estimate woudl be to take the brighest bioluminenscent molecule, pack it in a sphere with volume = your plant, and compute lux at 3 meters. Or something like that. Without growing lensing structures or other ways to focus/point light, the r3 falloff is gonna kill you.
      - 12y ago

kayhi 12y ago

Congrats! Send Kyle a high five for us, it's been awesome watching your progress!

stonemetal 12y ago

What plants are you working with? Are they pet and kid safe? Even at your current brightness levels it could make a cool nightlight for kids, as long as it doesn't kill them or the cat.

technotony 12y ago
We work with Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis is not very tasty but is not toxic either.

highCs 12y ago

Do you have pictures of glowing plants? (just been able to see 2 lowres photos so far)

technotony 12y ago
Here you go (note this is a 30 second exposure): http://cdn.optimizely.com/img/536610845/38f49c2ac92c415d824b8c28816f2ccd.png http://cdn.optimizely.com/img/536610845/38f49c2ac92c415d824b...
- dnautics 12y ago
  Is that with or without luciferin added?

viggity 12y ago

is your plant hybridized, or do you plan on developing hybrids to increase vigor after you've gotten the glow bright enough? You said elsewhere that you're increasing brightness 10-25% per week, which seems crazy fast. How fast do your plants reach maturity?

technotony 12y ago
Increased luminosity per week comes from protein engineering the pathways in bacteria. We then test those improvements in plant leaves, which takes about four weeks, before inserting the full DNA in a plant which is the slow part which takes 6 months.

seszett 12y ago

Will you eventually ship seeds overseas?

technotony 12y ago
We certainly hope so. Due to the divergence of regulations in different countries it will be on a country by country basis, most likely starting with Canada and Asia.

kourt 12y ago

How do you guarantee that this DNA will not get released into the wild, and what is your responsibility for the consequences if it does?

sampo 12y ago
> How do you guarantee that this DNA will not get released into the wild, and what is your responsibility for the consequences if it does? Don't be silly. It's only in movies that monsterous mutations appear. What consequences could this kind of useless, extra metabolical burden (luminescence) have? It would quickly disappear in nature.
johnpmayer 12y ago
Honestly I wouldn't be upset if the truth was none and none. May as well be happening in the open. edit: If I got these I'd be breeding it with all sorts of other close species; see what sticks.
api 12y ago
Not the op, but I have an answer to this. This plant is wasting energy by glowing. It serves no purpose that enhances the plant's fitness outside of a human environment. If it were released into the wild, chances are it would lose out in natural selection vs wild competitors. The same is true of most human domesticated species, most of which are effectively genetically engineered through ages of selective breeding. Picture dogs vs wolves, cows vs wild buffalo, etc.
- technotony 12y ago
  Exactly, the plant is not being given any kind of selective advantage and the genes in fact incur a metabolic cost on the plant so it will lose out to natural selection. The domesticated analogy is a great one, plus remember we took the genes from the wild in the first place!
  - gone35 12y ago
    Exactly, (...) Seriously? As the CEO of the company and the person ultimately responsible for this project, it is troubling that you endorse these simplistic and erroneous views of plant biosafety. Fitness is notoriously ecosystem-dependent and hard to predict, which is why microcosm and field experiments-based risk assessments exist in the first place --it unfortunately can't just be eyeballed from a simple metabolic account like that. And either way there is the additional risk of transgene flow, which is even more long-term and less understood --especially for such relatively distant horizontal transfers. You might have (unaccountably) skirted APHIS regulation, but that doesn't mean you don't have an ethical obligation to (1) thoroughly assess the biosafety of these plants; and (2) be frank in communicating these risks (and their uncertainty) to the public, even if they do not make as clean of a narrative as one would like.

craigyk 12y ago

I've wanted to do this since I saw a picture of a glowing tobacco plant in my biology textbook back in 1995. I've since done quite a bit of research on it, and there are some pretty serious obstacles. I assume you want to use luciferase... are you going to insert the whole enzymatic pathway? or sell "glowing plant fuel"? How do you get around the fact that this uses quite a bit of the plant's energy? Are you planning on attaching promoters that hack into the plant's day/night cycle? or seasonal changes?

Alex3917 12y ago
For what it's worth, it's trivially easy to grow your own bioluminescent fungi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bioluminescent_fungi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bioluminescent_fungi They don't last as long as the plants, but if you get the right ones then you can eat them once you're done.

simonebrunozzi 12y ago

Hey - if you are in the Bay Area, I'd like to see them in person. simone brunozzi at gggmmail.