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Glow-in-the-dark Christmas Trees
lawrence writes "The BBC is carrying this story about five post-grad students at the University of Hertfordshire who are planning on creating a glow-in-the-dark christmas tree. They would do this by adding the genes that cause glowing in fireflies and jellyfish, making the pine-needles glow all the time. They expect the cost of the trees to be about £200 ($330) Future possibilities involve coral genes that would make it multicolored. " I think my favorite part about this story is the comment about Americans being a likely market. *grin*
Jealousy??
I'll take some of the silliness of our consumer culture which is due to our greater freedom and greater respect for individual rights over the earnest seriousness and self-righteous sanctimoniousness of other, more socialist countries who feel, perhaps, that there ought to be a law against these kinds of things
Karma Protect mode
something fairly similar has been done already (dunno if it's on the web, but it's in my intro biology book (Biology, 5th Edition. Campbell.)) with tobacco plants. The neat part is that we can now express the gene in more than one non-native organism. How long until I can get some chloroplats engineered into the membranes of my skin cells?
Save the children; quit overparenting!
Yep, Chicago had 18" of snow, and it became a big deal .
Here in Minnesota we never carry on about things like that. (Oh wait, Minnesota does have most of the world's weather geeks!)
Last I heard, cancer was still caused by a group of cells that begin regenerating due to damage but for some reason never acknowledge the chemical signal to stop. There is, to my knowledge, no virus involved.
The anonymous coward I think went off on a rant and forgot to check his information before posting. Tsk tsk...
..Oh, and as for virii having a "right" to exist.. that may be, but unless you're opting to be the one put into a sealed tank to feed the virii, I don't think anyone will shed any tears over some particularly nasty diseases being cured.
Rob, enable the blink tag, would ya?
Please?
Pretty Please?
It would seem to me to be then merely a question of scale.
Do we not have the relevant portions mapped out yet?
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Actually, I don't think it can be said for sure whether or not it would be a popular item. There is no such thing as "they" in the sense you used; different things toot different peoples' horns.
GFP has also been used to create transgenic plants (and animals!) There are mice, for instance, that produce GFP in every cell in their body. This doesn't require as much energy as GFP is merely fluorescent (and this the fluorophore needs to be excited by external UV light), but this also makes it less attractive for the coolness factor.
If you're interested in this further, I highly recommend the book "Green Fluorescent Protein : Properties, Applications, and Protocols" by Martin Chalfie and Steven Kain (eds.). I've been reading through it quite a bit in lab, and it's a wonderful resource.
Anyway, I wish them luck in their rDNA endeavors, but I agree that they have their work cut out for them.
(To the tune of O Tannenbaum)
Cthulhu TreeO Cthulhu Tree...
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"A tan and skin cancer. You?"
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"
"I think my favorite part about this story is the comment about Americans being a likely market. *grin*"
Well, I'm still waiting for glow in the dark, multicolored lawn flamingos...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Find a gene that will keep the needles from
falling off.
Siberian hackers are suspected to have sown large amounts of modified conifer seed in a complicated arrangement forming graphics and letters, appearantly hoping to render a functioning encryption program visible on regular satellite photos from the area, thus making it globally available without violating national export legislation.
Nah, it wasn't conifers, it was "perl" barley.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Lots of xmas trees are ones that're just standing around outside one's home and get strung with lights. Just plant one of these instead, and it'll glow for free. And don't think that people won't do it just because these things would glow all year round. People have enough trouble getting their lights down by valentine's day -- they want the lights up all the time, and this is the perfect excuse for doing so.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
That will version 2 next for Christmas.
Hey, at least they'd be easier to find, should they ever get loose. :)
And it'd justify some mighty strange "Dumbo" parodies...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The glow? Feh. They've got jellyfish genes, so it'd be REALLY cool to give 'em tentacles. Right.
A glowing Christmas tree with stinging tentacles -- what better way to frighten the neighbor's dog?
{g}
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The next obvious modification is to edit in genes from Bing Crosby and Jerry Seinfeld so that your glow-in-the-dark tree serenade's your guests and loved ones with:
"Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg..."
IV
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
Uh, hi, ya, I AM an American.
I go to work everyday, paying my taxes, and would gladly die for all this country was founded on.
This was meant to be funny to people with a sick and twisted off beat sense of humor (like myself and many of my friends).
But if you want reality, all I said was true.
American's are lazy - don't believe me, look at highschools, how many people do their own work?
American's are braggarts - don't believe me, just hang around a mall sometime and watch everyone talk about how they have something better.
And as for not wanting to learn new things, why do you think linux hasn't taken off...people would rather stick with windows because they know it.
I've proven all my points, though I was hoping I wouldn't have to.
Glow-in-the-dark plants sound like they could have a lot of potental. Lots of people have a small plant or two around the house - what if your aloe doubled as a nightlight?
:)
Granted, it might not work, or require special expensive fertilizer... but ultimately this goes beyond crassly commercial glowing Xmas trees. This goes to crassly commercial house foilage in general!
If these things get popular, will Motel 6 leave a tree out for you?
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
Of course Americans would love this kind of crap!
Welcome to the land where being King of the Suburbs is almost as important as highschool football!
You would be the talk of the neighborhood with one of those trees.
If they can make mice glow, can reindeer be far behind?
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
And when you input the glowing food & beverages, I wonder will the output also glow?
I'd like to see glow-in-the-dark shrubs along your driveway (so you can see at night). Glow-in-the-dark ivy would be interesting on building exteriors.
And why limit your gene splicing to plants? How fun would it be to have a glow-in-the-dark dog?
Anybody know if the chemicals responsible for phospholumenescence are toxic? If they're not, you can do really neat stuff. Glow-in-the-dark fruit could be the basis for easy-to-find midnight snacks and exotic resturaunt entrees. Better yet, glow-in-the-dark algae, making for glowing beverages.
After reading a few comments from some more informed people than I, I doubt that the "glowing tree" will ever happen. However, I drool at the the idea and application of glowing plants. As a amature gardener, the first place I would run with glowing plants would be Disney. They are never at loss for lighting their parks. It would allow for some interesting lanscaping as well.
Glowing flowers, bushes. Kids would have a field day. Then again, so would most of the parents.
Please excuse my spelling. It's late, and I don't want to run a spell checker.
and maybe a star on top and we'd be all set. Still, this sounds like the stuff bad horror movies are made of. Imagine if they'd develop intelligence and start devouring people. On the other hand, a grove of carniverous christmas trees just doesn't have a big scare factor.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Think of how much fossil fuel such a thing would save if it glowed on its own instead of having to be plugged into the local power plant. There's too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it is, and here we have a glowing xmas tree that, being a tree, actually deducts from the aggregate atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Of course it'll be ugly as hell, but we're used to that here in the states. Since when has xmas ever been about demonstrating good taste in America?
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
while i doubt i'd be a buyer of a glowing christmas tree (i _am_ american, but i don't spend $350 on something i'll only use for about a month, besides, i'm an atheist) i like to think this sort of thing would catch on in other areas as well.
think of it. tree-lined walkways that are perpetually lit without need for electric lights. glowing grass-bordered landing strips that are visible in power outages. whole glowing forests and jungles filled with insomniac monkeys!
now, if they could only figure out how to have plants glow without need for luciferase (which sounds like nothing more to me than satan's protein) in the soil...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
the glowing of fireflies is the result of a chemical reaction in and special organ of the firefly, the firefly can somehow controll this.
how can this apply to a tree. trees arent animals and I IMHO can't see that combining animal and vegetable genes has any result.
if this however is possible, would it also be possible to add the genes for growing arms and legs to a tree and growing arms and legs for transplantation in that way.
I am now an expert on genetics but is seems impossible to me to combine animal and vegetable genes. IMHO the differ too much.
---
Glow in the dark children, so you know when they're sneaking around. Playing hide and go seek in elementary school would suck, though... "What's that light in the tunnel?! It's Bobby!! You're it!"
Imaging the next time you have to give a urine sample....scare the #*&$# out of the nurse...
Actually, that is what they are doing.
Luciferase is an enzyme that reacts with a chemical called Luciferin to create light. The trees will have the genes to create the luciferase enzyme, but will still need a source of luciferin. The plan is to put luciferin in the water, and when a christmas tree sucks up the water into the leaves (Which it will still do after it has been cut), you can get the reaction.
Remember, you can't get something for nothing. The energy for the light has to come from somewhere... if it's not the wall outlet, then it's the fertilizer. And which is more expensive? Granted, the tree-glows are much more efficient than the lights (heat factor), but still...
> The sad part is that these will probably be popular. I suppose that they will help prevent candle-causing house fires, and save on electricity. But Geeze!
Since when did house fires make candles? I'm going to find some burned-down house and collect all the candles! (I think he meant candle-caused.)
Kenneth Arnold
PS - Add one advantage: Save hours that could better be spent with the family (optional) or r e adi n g Slashdot!
I think my favorite part about this story is the comment about Americans being a likely market
Not to mention the Japanese, they love tacky stuff like that.
Mind you...they probably have enough glowing vegetation as it is.
This is all wrong though.Why resort to such unnatural methods when we could just dispense with the trees and hang luminous jellyfish around the house at Christmas instead.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
What we need really need is the translucent iMammoth, available in 5 "flavors".
glow in the dark trees = cheese.
at the local 7-11 up here in canada they are selling glow in the dark slurpee cups with glow in the dark lids, and it reminded me that when i was little, 7-11 had glow in the dark straws for a while.
the straws were great, we used to charge them up under a lamp, then close out all light from the ~20 foot hallway in the basement, and chuck the glowing staws at each other. a couple teams of ski-goggle-and-jacket-clad kids. what a blast!
but the tree idea thing just sounds lame.
"..Constructive critizism is always welcome however."
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
Let me see if I remember this right, from my molecular biology classes:
:) I wonder how much succes a stinky X-mas tree will get...
1) The firefly gene you use for making plants glow encodes the enzyme Luceferase.
2) The (greenish) ligth is emitted when the enzyme breaks down the compound Luceferin.
3) No luceferin = no light. You need to water the plant with a luceferin solution in order to make them glow. As far as I remember luceferin STINKS LIKE HELL
Besides, the tree needs to be alive in order to take up Leceferin and glow.
Eating is NOT the only problem with GM crops.
What if the genetic changes in the GM Xmas trees happen to kill off a species which is beneficial to other trees? This could happen even as the result of small scale trials, hence there is no difference between research and mass sale in this case. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that this kind of effect has already been observed in the US? (I don't know the reference I'm afraid)
"What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death."
The extra energy (and matter) needed for the plant to make the "new" protein will have to be supplied by new soil, water, and/or light requirements (read: increased energy input). People have to manage the soil requirement, and both people and the plant can manage the water requirement.
:)
Example: Why do all of my houseplants die off in the winter and grow like weeds in the summer? Changes in the light level change the energy entering the system that is the plant.
And I said 'increase', not 'double'. We're not duplicating the sun. Just turning the plants into some form of Gro-lites.
Yes, I know I did this joke last year. I laughed so hard I had to do it again.
fish and pipes
Would they continue to glow in the dark after the tree died?
Canadians are fatter (by population) than Americans? I really doubt it.. We have snow to shovel!
Canadians are fatter (by population) than Americans? I really doubt it.. We have snow to shovel!
If the proteins produce light in the right wavelengths, plants utilizing the protein can absorb the light and use it for photosynthesis. That would reduce the risk of death by underlit conditions, and could increase the growth/yield of the plant.
This is the part where the pulp/paper industry utilizes the tech to accelerate tree growth, if they can separate the protein(s) in the pulp process.
This kind of thing does seem neat, if a bit over the top. I'm wondering: At what point is it cheaper to buy a tree that glows on its own, than to buy a regular tree and normal lights? I don't know offhand how much it costs to light a normal strand of decorations, but I imagine there's a positive tradeoff somewhere. Add to that the benefits of not having to listen to any of those ornaments which play 'Jingle Bells' and won't stop and you have a sure thing!
-Denor
Is this a dieting tip?
Vattenfall (lit. Waterfall) is a Swedish power company specialising in water power and nuclear energy... I don't quite see the connection to fossil fuels.
...And you can be sure any glowing trees will be marketed with an appropriately marketable name...
...Like "Lucifer trees"?
Killer bees might be a good example of a small scale genetic thingie gone wrong. Alas i've been working all day so the details on this particular story just don't seem to be present at this time ;-) Anyone ?
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
beauty is only a light switch away
This isn't any more stupid than the already traditional tree-cutting, something which IS practiced outside of America [ahem].
Go with plastic trees, at least. It's only tacky if you don't consider the environmental implications. Plastic may be bad for the environment but manufacturing reusable trees have got to do less damage than clear-cutting forests to make way for "tree farms".
They think, "that makes two of us."
Psst..Buddy, want some luciferin-producing marigolds to plant under your trees? Only $200, but they'll keep the trees lit all summer...
I guess I'd better halt the experiments on the glowing cold-tolerant Kudzu I've been working on, then. Damn!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
On the other hand, the tree might die too quickly. Why does the Xmas tree tradition suddenly seem cruel?
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
Um nice but no.
What you are describing is perpetual motion - using the energy put out by a system (in this case photons from the tree) fed back into the system to power it. You *cannot* make this worthwhile - The laws of thermodymanics say that you can't win, and you can't break even. Anyone who says otherwise is a crank.
In the best case your enegry efficiency is near 100% - ie you collect most of the energy that you sent out, and don't gain anything, only lose a little.
In the real world, energy effiency is likely to be very low, i.e.
1) Energy lost while powering the luciferin/luciferase reaction
2) Only a fraction of the emited light will hit the tree's leaves.
3) Photosynthesis in those leaves will be inefficient.
Therefor there is no way that the tree doing this this would increase the yield of the plant - quite the oposite.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I'm sure I've missed a few wacky variations, so feel free to reply to this insert descriptive word here post!
Have a Merry Christmas with your light-up tree! Yeah, I know this is exactly two months early
Kenneth Arnold
Where's the HTML tag that makes my post not stupid?
Which actually makes these trees the perfect start for more intensive genetic manipulation. A sorry state where in order to gain acceptance, a branch of research has to stoop to frivolous applications. But if Americans (and, unfortunately, therefore the world) are going to accept recombindant DNA technologies, it will be in safe niches that they do. Meaning plants they don't eat. Animals are too 'alive'- a glow in the dark dog would be "wrong" in too many eyes, I think. And genetically engineered food has been too big an issue for too long. I'm all for glowing plants though. Or color patterns. Company logos. Whatever. Anything to get it into the public eye in an unthreatening way.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
Can you imagine if they tried to film the Blair Witch Project in a forest of glowing trees.....
While your concerns are certainly warranted, new strains of plant life don't just go spreading uncontrollably unless they have some sort of evolutionary advantage over their "normal" siblings. I can't think of any reason why a bioluminescence would increase a tree's chance at reproduction, but I suppose the engineering could have some unexpected side-effects as you indicate.
Plus, as another poster mentioned, it would probably be pretty easy to engineer them sterile.
Pee is irridescent (?)/luminescent (?) when you shine black light into it. There's a McDonald's here that uses black lighting in the bathroom. It's kinda gross, actually, since you can see little glowing droplets of pee where people have splashed/missed...
<tim><
yes,
we are the nation of easily amused,
and we are proud of it!
Grunt. Oink, oink.
The artificial tree best expresses the meaning of Christmas.
1) Start with a large pickle or cucumber. Best size is 6-9 inches in length.
2) Remove the female end of a 10 foot extension cord. Strip the cord to expose the copper wire.
3) Wrap the exposed wire around a 3 inch steel nail, then insert the nails halfway into each opposing end of the pickle.
4) Place pickle on concrete or other non-flammable area. PLug the male end into the wall.
5) Enjoy the brief spectacle of a pickle, glowing bright green with approximately 30 lumens
6) Reset circuit breaker and explain the situation to your landlord and/or fireman
I've done this many times; it is lots of fun. I've had no fires yet, but be careful. Every pickle is different.
Scudder
New DT out today, 26 Oct, btw...
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
And when you input the glowing food & beverages, I wonder will the output also glow?
No, probably not. Proteases in the stomach (i.e. pepsin) should pretty much disassemble the glowing components.
If they didn't, you probably wouldn't notice anything anyway, though it would certainly make drug tests more interesting ("Sir, we have strict rules against plutonium consumption").
*cough*
"Hell yes!"
Yep.
And I could put "I was being silly" in blinking red letters that you couldn't fail to notice.
You know, I think it is a bit silly for a tree that glows... Someone actually spent time on this.... But think of this...you would be able to see the landfills from space with all the glowing trees that were thrown away. Not to mention about the people that through them in ponds and lakes to create a place for fishing.. Crazy.
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
Luciferase is a firefly gene that catalyzes the breakdown of the chemical luciferin, emitting light in the process. (Yellow light.) Fireflies "blink" by controlling the access of luciferase to luciferin. A plant isn't going to blink since it doesn't have the appropriate control machinery (e.g. no neurons to send a signal saying "turn on now"). But a plant could always simply glow steadily. Unfortunately, plants don't make luciferin, and normal luciferase doesn't catalyze anything in a normal non-firefly-light-organ cell. I presume that the postdocs have figured out a way to get around this.
Even stranger is the idea to use GFP. GFP (green fluorescent protein) is responsible for most of the neat pictures of glowing organisms that you're likely to see. However, what they don't tell you is that since it is fluorescent it requires violet or blue light as input. GFP absorbs violet or blue light, blah blah Stokes Shift blah blah, and emits green light. If you're going to shine blue light on your tree, why bother with all the confusing luciferase stuff and--if you want yellow--just include YFP as well (which works just like GFP except it emits yellow, or actually more chartreuse, light).
My guess as to what the group is really trying to do is this: find and use a luciferase-like gene that creates bioluminescence out of common cellular energy carriers, e.g. NADPH. Plants store the energy from sunlight in NADPH, so if you express this gene, they'd glow (at least during the day...). Furthermore, the reaction would ideally produce blue light. It's tough to get blue light out of a plant, because cholorphyll absorbs blue light. But if you tack on a GFP, it will convert the blue light to green and you'll be able to see it fine. Likewise for yellow with YFP. If you want orange or red, you can tack on both a GFP and a coral fluorescent protein, which will turn green light into an orangy color.
It makes a nice headline, but it sounds rather complicated to me. I wouldn't hold your breath for these trees.
I laughed out loud when I read that they had already created glowing mice. I want pics of that. I don't know why, it just strikes me as very funny to see mice running around glowing in the dark.
Perhaps you wouldn't mind explaining this?
//wwwmed.stanford.edu/center/communications/Pressr el/October97/glow.html - labmice
http:
http://www.promega.com/pnotes/49/ 2788d/2788d.html - pictures of glowing fruitflies and plants.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
This will make a great sequel to
Baskerville's Hound.
What about a pig glowing in a dark? To minimize
collision of an airplane with a flying pig?
Grunt. Oink, oink.
...to make a tree that's actually tackier than the silver aluminum ones with pink tinsel.
Now, if we can get a glowing tree that grows shiny silver, gold, and red spherical fruits that produce their own insecticides and taste like popcorn balls. Oh, and make the rest of the tree taste like peppermint so when you're done with it you dont have to drag it out to the curb..
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
GFP fluoresces only when you shine ultraviolet light on it. So you'll need to set up a blacklight or some such to make it glow. This is no energy saver...
Lucifer
:)
Light bearing
Yes, I know you were joking.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Well, not only does the fact of owning a glowing Christmas tree scare the hell out of me, it also makes me think about how commercial Christmas is. We have commercials telling us to "the perfect gift" for mom/dad/sister/brother/neice/nephew/cat/dog/bird/f rog/rock and it's a pathetic waste of time. I mean, does a company actually care if your parents, etc. (see above for more examples) are happy with the gift they receive? Hell no, they just care that they make some gigantic product and you turn the wheel of the country's economy, and the latter isn't that common either.
So what can we do to stop this total insult to our intelligence one may ask, well, not buying the product is a solution, but how many people can safely say they will not buy it regardless? Not many, I presume. We're forced as the human species to fit in as best we can, especially the younger generations.
Listen up SlashDot readers, it's getting pathetic how this idea/story is actually commended by the public, it's a pathetic idea, and some things are just too traditional to try and change. This will not catch on, it will just sit there in the stockroom collecting dust for god knows how many years. Now, glowing underwear.. that's a different story.
Trying not to flame,
Matthew
_____________________________________
sortakinda.ca | canadian paraphrasing.
Hey, I live in the chicagoland area and not to many seasons ago, we had 18" of snow fall on us one night. Our snow blower was useless and i had to shovel it :). It also gave me an excuse to get a phat 7.5hp monster plow :).
Well, see, Americans are very dual-minded about things. When it comes to health and safety things that the rest of the world has adopted, they're slow to follow - after all, we have to be more cautious than our overzealous overseas friends.
:) And you can be sure any glowing trees will be marketed with an appropriately marketable name...
But when it comes to gadgets, geegaws, and trinkets... you'd better BET we'd have 'em before anyone else!
If irradiated food was labeled with "XTRA-PUR, blessed by angels for your consumption!" it'd be less controversial.
If we go further...
a night light for nerds. Soft, gentle light for those sore eyeballs. Maybe make it some sort of a creeping vine with enhanced growth rate. Plant some seeds now, get a glowing, organic spaghetti all around the walls tomorrow! That would be cool.
As a bonus you could cut off a long straight piece of that glowing plant and play Darth Vader with the lightsaber you just created. "Psss-pahhh your feeble skills are no match to the powahhh of the dark side".
I wonder if they make extra heavy duty bright versions for people who suffer from seasonal affected disorders during dark winters.
-"What the hell is that?!"
-"That's ambassador Kosh without his encounter suit."
-"Oh, I thought it was just another Christmas tree."
>(8< ~ we come in peace
I find the idea of a glowing x-mas tree in my living room a bit too creepy. Maybe this is right up someones X-File alley, but I like my Christmas Cheer the traditional way, not the Freak-Show way. /fester
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
They're inserting the appropriate genes into the tree so it'll grow its own luciferase. Much cheaper, and probably equally as important, much more patentable. I could definitely see some corporation like Monsanto getting in on this sort of thing.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
The BBC have an article up about this at This page
Pretty much the same as we know but its got a picture of a normal tree on it. Which is nice.
If they're going to try to bring back mammoths, and are going to be a bit short on the DNA...
:-)
Anyone for glowing green mammoths?!
Mammoth 2000 - now in your choice of day-glo colors!
I'm holding out till they come with there own presents
"pull my finger" - Uncle Chuckles
Sarcasim On
Oh, this is what I always hoped gene-splicing would come to. This is the pinnacle of genetic engineering technology. Christmas trees that Glow! When we could be curing cancer or fighting the common cold we are making ugly, gaudy, ultra-American glow-in-the-dark Christmas trees.
/Sarcasim Off
The sad part is that these will probably be popular. I suppose that they will help prevent candle-causing house fires, and save on electricity. But Geeze!
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
This raises some interesting possibilities - a bit more genetic engineering (OK, a lot more) and in the future you might be able to grow you own wall sized computer screen using RGB enzyme triplets.
Only problem is that I'd probably kill it off by forgetting to water it...
Right to the point! So what if a bunch of Americans who evidently have more money than taste buy these things. Hell, I think the English are still upset that we don't drink tea with milk in it at 11:00. Or eat kidney pie. Have you ever smelled kidney pie cooking? EEEEEw. And THEY say there's no accounting for taste. You want tacky? Try the Japanese or Mexicans. Those guys are at least as weird as Americans in matters of taste.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
I think that pudgy penguin is getting a bit old... I'm all for the green glowing mammoth! Much more likely to achieve world domination than some fish-munching flightless bird!
- Have a picture
> I'm guessing that other parts of plants are the
> same way, so the carbon in wood and leaves was
> originally part of atmospheric CO2.
Yup, you're correct. That's why you can grow a plant in pure water (it won't thrive, but it'll grow). Similarly, we lose weight by breathing (though not enough to make a difference, to you dieters out there!)
<tim><
In my experience with luciferase, with bacteria anyway, the glowing effect only lasts for a couple days! Wonder if they have a way to stabilize this (particularly in a, at that point, dead or dying tree) ?
The gene in question (or something similar) is patched into E. coli all the time in HS and college biology classes. The resulting bacteria sit in a suspension and do not glow. Only when the flask is shaken do they glow, because that's the only time they get enough oxygen to metabolize enough energy.
A quick look at the average xmas tree configuration reveals:
1) The trees are cut and screwed into a base.
2) The screws puncture the phloem (or whatever it's called) that carries the actual nutrients.
3) In combination with these two factors, most trees are put in plain water, which has precious little energy in it.
Seems to me that any tree that's going to glow reasonably well is going to have to be at least in miracle-gro, and probably in something more special than that to get any real benefit.
Not only that, but these are first-run products. My guess is that people will buy them, set them up, wonder why they don't glow, call the company, get told to feed them something nutritious, and be disappointed when they only glow a little bit.
I won't deny the neatness factor of staying up until 1 in the morning and turning all the lights off for an hour so your eyes adjust enough to see your tree glow, but don't expect anything spectacular for your $300, folks!
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
"Mommy why is our tree covered in fireflies?"
With this great new idea, that tacky aluminum tree suddenly becomes obsolete.
Or maybe Charlie Brown is obsolete, too, and it's time for something like After Y2K to come up with their own claymation christmas special, featuring a tree just like the one we're talking about.
That would be cool. What I wouldn't have done for a dog that did that when I was growing up.
Just think what we're likely to be telling our children and grandchildren in 50 years or so -
"In my day, dogs didn't poo glow-in-the-dark."
"No, we didn't have glow-in-the-dark velociraptors either."
"No, Michael Jackson always looked that way. He just didn't glow."
Etc...
"The most common element isn't hydrogen, it's stupidity."
On the other hand, a grove of carniverous christmas trees just doesn't have a big scare factor.
Oh really? Maybe that's just because you've never been CHRISTMAS TREE HUNTING at NIGHT when it's DARK and COLD, surrounded by HORDES of FLESH-EATING needley CONIFERS!?!
* Something brushes your shoulder.
* You turn around. There's nothing there. Just you and the trees.
* Just you and the trees.
* Odd, the forest is becoming strangely dense ahead.
* You try to push through. Not much luck. Your efforts are rewarded by a frosty slap in the face from a protruding branch.
* Hrm. Better try backing out and going around.
* ... huh... it wasn't this tight a squeeze going in...
* Gah! Blocked this way too...
* You feel pine needles against your back as you start to back up.
* You look up. The lofty pines arch overhead, completely hiding the sky from view. You see nothing but trees.
* They seem to be closing in around you.
* You see nothing but trees.
* Just you and the trees.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH*?^#@(*&$^(*#@&^$#@
*twitch*
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
A recent Nature Biotechnology issue had an article about a "recombinant DNA artist" who has bred a glow-in-the-dark German Shepherd expressing GFP in its fur as well as the paper announcing the red GFP's from coral, with c ommentary.
Requires a password, but if you care enough to read them, you probably already have one...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Walking down a winding garden path dimly lit by glowing ornamental shrubs sounds very relaxing and romantic!
Stefan
(despite the fact that a very small minority of Americans are familiar with the acronym GPF...)
I'm suprised that General Motors isn't getting its panties in a bunch over the constant use of their trademark for the "evil" Genetically Modified stuff.
If somehow the widely used term was Modified S@!#, and it was constantly shortened to MS I can imagine that there would be one large and vocally unhappy corporation. Speaking of which, I wonder how the boyz in Redmond feel about sharing their abbreviation with a crippling disease?
I heard some English guy wants to use the same jellyfish gene in dogs. hair pigmentation splicing only of course. The morning radio idiots (L.A.)were talking about it the other day...I think they should leave the dogs hair alone and light up its mucus production glands. Late at night a man breaks into your house...creeping stealthly through your livingroom. Your dog, unseen, barks...his mouth opening with a 'muzzle flash' (ha!) and the burgler wets his pants. Plus, imagine the % decrease in stepping in dog shit. You could see it at night, at least until it dried up.
Where are the keys to my whore?
I love your sig:
:-)
*I am the bully who made gradeschool a living hell for you and all your geek friends... and now I've found you!
I ran into someone like that the other day while I was out of the office on my lunch break. I got to bitch at him for screwing up my hamburger order too
In Thailand there's a species of fireflies
that flashes in sync. It's really amazing to see these bugs at night.
How about engineering those babies to take the cold?
I love Christmas the family time, but I hate Christmas the overcommercialized holiday. I could probably attempt to write a lengthy diatribe about how America is too commercialized, the forgetting of the genuine meaning behind important holidays, materialism, and public gullibility, but I should probably start making my shopping list...
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."
when do I get to glow in the dark?
Insert mind here.
Lisa! In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I wonder whether the energy budget for that would work. If the tree is putting energy into glowing, will it have any energy left over for growing?
Luciferase? My god, these trees are spawn of satan!
I would love one, but I suspect the same groups that are slowing the acceptance of irradiated foods in the USA will have a field day with genetically engineered trees.
Scientific expertise disagree on what impact genetically modified cristmas trees may have on the environment. The producers have been eager to point out that since the tree isn't supposed to be eaten, the effect on humans is most likely nil. Others are not quite that optimistic, and fears have been raised that the gene may spread from domesticated trees to their wild counterparts, possibly making entire forests glow continuously and thus upsetting the natural balance between day and night.
Meanwhile, reports from Russia suggest that another British invention, the allegedly UFO-made crop circles, is being exploited on a grand scale. Siberian hackers are suspected to have sown large amounts of modified conifer seed in a complicated arrangement forming graphics and letters, appearantly hoping to render a functioning encryption program visible on regular satellite photos from the area, thus making it globally available without violating national export legislation.