The engineering is becoming more exotic, that's for sure, but it's not new by any stretch
That's called selective breeding and it's not even in the same ballpark as modern genetic modification of organisms.
Framing modern genetic modification as a mere exotic form of selective breeding is a dishonest frame that downplays the powers of modern biotech as well as the potential danger it poses.
We concluded that indeed "green tinted moonlight" was about feasible, maybe not even. Seems like now they have a better way, too bad there are no details.
In a dark room with fully-acclimated eyes, they definitely glow.
Mine are still perking up from shipping, so we'll see what output they finally achieve, but people forget you can see in a room lit by a single LED. It doesn't take much to be a night-light.
That's some weasel wording here. Are they still annuals if they're grown indoors or not?
Cilantro, by contrast, is a proper annual. It's a nightmare to keep it from going to seed, and it won't survive long after producing seeds. With a lot of work (proper pruning, temperatures, water, light wavelengths, ...) you can keep it alive more than a year, but in the wild it's definitely an annual no matter where you plant it on Earth.
Petunias are happy to live multiple years. Like tomatoes [0], they're originally from more tropical areas and are perennials so long as they aren't exposed to frost, against which they have no defenses. In the anglosphere we've borrowed a lot of plants from elsewhere in the world, and in the presence of a proper winter we tend to treat them as annuals instead.
[0] https://www.wdwinfo.com/news-stories/tomato-tree-in-epcots-l...
In outdoor conditions where freezing occurs (most of the United States), outdoor petunias can be considered annuals as frost or near freezing temperatures will harm them. However they do not die after simply seeding.
However petunias moved indoors for the winter will generally survive for multiple years when kept out of cold weather (best to keep them above 50 degrees F). Petunias are in the nightshade family, and behave like you would expect if you have experience with members of the family.
At some point an indoor plant may decline or die for a variety of reasons (bacterial and fungal disease buildup can be an issue), however petunias are notable for being very easy to propagate via cuttings, as such they can be kept alive/multiplied indefinitely if you are willing to put in the work and research into how to care for them.
It should be noted that light.bio is perfectly fine with personally propagating them if you like, so long as you aren’t selling them: https://old.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/1aw14j3/genetica...
I plan to keep mine indoors with grow lights.
>The seeds do not yet breed true; that requires a much longer development timeline.
Instead I’d suggest learning to propagate via cuttings, which petunias are one of the easiest plants to try with. Which they are fine with: https://old.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/1aw14j3/genetica...
>And no problem making new plants from seed or cutting. We just don’t want you to set up a new business (took us 10 years to make this plant, so yeah…).
After some time in sunlight and getting watered, the glowing was a bit better and I could see more of the flowers. Once the sun got lower I put them under some led lighting.
At my final check for the day I could start to make out some of the leaves. The glow is still faint and requires adjusting to darkness, but didn’t take nearly as long.
As it recovers and starts growing vigorously, I do expect it to improve, though I doubt it will ever be capable of competing with most ambient light from any nearby sources.
Basically I got what I was expecting and look forward to them continuing to develop the tech, though I do think the company should be more cautious with their marketing images. I’m well aware of how good cameras are at being ad-hoc nightvision since as an agronomist I sometimes end up still trying to scout things when it’s getting dark, and my pictures still look like near daylight. Other people though may end up a bit too optimistic, and disappointed.
Eventually I’ll figure out how to take a picture that reflects what I actually see.
I’d love to see this applied to English daisies.
Immediately out of the shipping box they’ll be a bit rank, which is normal and expected from keeping a nightshade in a box for 3 days. It quickly dissipates.
I recognized the picture of the glowing tobacco plant.
[1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-pla...
Then, two years later, one of the guys behind the scam off-ed himself. No idea if it was related to it or not, but that's too high of a price to pay for a meager amount of $$$.
I would totally buy it.
Awesome that it can be done at all but sounds like the images give an exaggerated impression of the glow.
When I enter a dark room from a lit room, I initially can't see anything. But given 60-80 seconds, I become able to clearly see the shapes of furniture around me, and even the pattern on the carpet, even though the room is lit only by a couple of indicator LEDs from a router sitting on the top of a closet.
I bet that after a few minutes in a dark room, the petunias will look very visible and detailed. The room has to be dark though; a distant streetlamp through the window would easily overpower a flower.
The mechanism for the bioluminescence must reside in some other cellular organelle.
However, if the genes are added to plastid DNA instead of the nucleus, then female seeds would have an exact copy of the bioluminescent DNA additions, since only DNA in the nucleus changes at fertilization.
Edit: couldn’t resist. Took it into a dark room and it indeed glows with an eerie light. Science!
