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*

Comments

There's so much *more* they could do!

[Stonehand]

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}

Trees

[Negadecimal]

I think there's more potential elsewhere. Glow-in-the-dark Christmas trees are simply too weird. What sort of lights/ornaments to you put on a glowing tree with? Do you rewrite your Christmas songs ("O' Glowing Tree...")? They're probably ugly as hell, though.

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.

now if they'd only grow their own ornaments

[tuffy]

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.

This is weirder than it might sound....

[Ichoran]

Since I know a little bit about the subject, this article strikes me as both an obvious idea and a peculiar (impossible) approach to implementing it.

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.

Trade wars

[Anders Andersson]

However, the controversy between the USA and Europe over genetically modified vegetables may put a dimmer on that christmas illumination. While the European Union demands labelling of genetically modified food, the USA considers responding to these restrictions by placing selected European goods under heavy import duties. Mutant christmas trees from Britain seem to be a prime candidate for this.

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.