I got my firefly petunias from light.bio around a month or so ago and they’re now just starting to take off. This picture was taken in a dark room with no windows, though I’m sure the phone brightened it up a bit. They aren’t as bright as I was imagining, but I still find them neat.
I got some Spring of last year! I have ‘em outside. Not terribly impressive but a fun novelty.
@movies Aye! I agree. It would be cool if one day they could make them maybe 10 times as bright with other color options. Yours lasted through the winter? That is nice to hear.
It’s not a light bulb lol. If it were ten times as bright the plant would exhaust it’s own energy and die
@Doxatek lol. This picture oversells how bright they are. A guesstimate on my part would be a 10x increase would bring it up to the level of a glow in the dark sticker.
I got my wife some of those last year. I wish they had lasted longer, but we couldn’t find a balance of sunlight that they liked. And yeah, they not all that bright, but still super cool.
God, I want some of these so bad. They are so fun. I gotta sort the plants I have still haha.
This is so cool. Thank you for sharing!
I’m glad these are still being sold. I first read about them last year, but was moving at the time. I’d really like to get some.
I wish they would ship to europe, i allways wanted one of those.
Those look damn cool. I’m not really a plant person, but I’d be sure to try to change if I could get some of those. Doesn’t look like they ship to Europe though.
I’m afraid no reputable seller does, as the EU has a ban on gene-edited organisms like plants and fish. Understandable but i’d sure would have liked to have a tank filled with Glofish
Probably very unpopular opinion. I don’t get it how you could buy genetically modified plants.
-unpredictable impact on ecosystems
-uncontrolled spread through insects/seed
-no long term studies available
I really wish people would be more responsible with our environment.
depends on your definition of genetically modified. you’d be hard pressed to find any plant that hasn’t been selectively bred, spliced and adapted by humans.
That’s a disingenuous argument. You can’t selectively breed an completely foreign gene into an organism. I can’t believe this even has to be said, but I guess the GMO lobby gets to people more than I thought.
Yes you can, it just takes a lot more effort to get the right random mutation.
Good luck breeding a plant until it replicates jellyfish DNA for fluorescence.
No one lobbied me lol. They cross bred a petunia with a mushroom. It’s roughly the same concept as when humans bred maize.
Not really. They transformed plant cells in a lab with GFP from a mushroom and established a stable transgenic line. This can’t be done without modern techniques. Not the same as breeding them
No they didn’t crossbred it. Fungi and plants are so far apart in the tree of life that suggesting this is ludicrous. You can’t get a fungal spore and place it in a petunia’s flower and get a hybrid.
DNA manipulation in a lab and selective breeding are fundamentally different. It’s silly to try to compare both.
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You don’t need to plant them outside
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Above
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Don’t eat them
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I think it’s a fair concern in general but fine in this case since the company almost certainly edited in the lux operon which is one of the most well studied and understood gene switches out there. It and similar pathways have been used in many branches of science for decades. I think the novelty here is just that it’s in a consumer product instead.
Some GMOs are approved and released before we fully understand their long-term ecological or health impacts. While short-term studies may show no harm, ecological processes unfold over decades.
Another thing is that introducing glowing flowers might make genetic modification seem harmless or trivial. This could lead to less critical public debate and a gradual erosion of caution in how such technologies are used.
According to the website, they can’t reproduce by seed, only by division.
In each seed this gene would segregate some wouldn’t express at all, some lower and if you did it more times more than likely the mutation would be lost
I think the concern is more about cross-pollination, not seeds from the plant directly
