https://light.bio/ looks more interesting than injecting glowing substances

Heh, I just came across this though "Our Firefly Petunias are protected under patent, and as such, propagation and breeding are not permitted. These petunias are sold exclusively for personal use."

Edit: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11913033B2 curious if anyone has come across DIY versions?

Did also find - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glowing_Plant_project

I have some of these, they're quite neat. Needs to be in proper darkness - we moved ours into our bedroom as a nightlight.

The company has made statements indicating propagating for personal use is OK.

I'm buying some and giving the seeds to as many neighbours as possible for free. Imagine patenting a fucking plant.

Imagine spending years and millions of dollars doing the R&D on said plant, and finding mass-cultured clones for sale in Home Depot the next year undercutting your investment.

It's a novel invention and no one needs glowing petunias. I think that's pretty much the ideal scenario for a patent.

If your business model relies on fairly draconian control over the liberties of individuals in ways that defy normal human social norms (like propagating and giving away plants), then its probably not the right business model. Not even just from a moral standpoint; its a losing business model.

Also, exerting control over a commercial cloning effort and trying to control personal use and propagation are totally different scenarios.

The reality is their business is just not going to be substantially hurt by personal propagation and use.

Again, the business recognizes this difference. They openly permit personal propagation. They just don't want you starting a for-profit glowing plants nursery with your clones.

Imagine that genetic modification escapes into wild, and then everyone on the plannet affected by it. How your patent will help to avoid that?

It can't. That's not what patents are for. The same could happen for an unpatented modified plant.

We have the USDA for these things. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/program-update/aphis-issues-...

> APHIS found this modified petunia is unlikely to pose an increased plant pest risk compared to other cultivated petunia. As a result, it is not subject to regulation under 7 CFR part 340. From a plant pest risk perspective, this petunia may be safely grown and bred in the United States.

Imagine that people have been breeding animals and plants for thousands and thousands of years, and still anybody is free to do what they want with them.

Getting two animals to fuck and genetically engineering a plant in the lab are… not quite comparable in required levels of effort. Even then, if you want semen from a Kentucky Derby-winning thoroughbred to try and build off those genes, it'll cost you. Or a purebred dog.

No one's putting in decades of R&D into something like this if they can only sell a few thousand for a single year before the big nurseries take over.

People have been making wheels for nearly as long, and yet Ford can patent new wheel designs.

plant patents are explicitly one of THE categories of patents (in the US).

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/data/patde...

Imagine patenting something that doesn't exist in nature that you created? It's also not a foodstuff or required for living in any way.

there is no normative legality of these things.. or anything.. its just whatever people decide the law to be at the time..

You are quite correct, that's not how it works.

Corn mazes are actually created by selectively planing the corn in a pattern or by selectively cutting down plants to create the maze. This can be done with a variety of different plants, but corn is a popular choice because of it's height, durability, and the timing of its harvest.

I suspect the similarity of its other name (maize) is just a coincidence.

The Firefly petunias retain their glow with propagation. Cloning via a cutting is the easiest and most reliable way.

The seeds are hit-or-miss, but the genes definitely get passed on in some.

Why wouldn't propagation create further glowing plants, they're genetically modified?

I'm looking forward to bioluminescent ivy.

"Oh no, not again."

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/124539-curiously-enough-the...

Monsanto sells seeds made sterile so that users could not breed them in the wild. “Terminator seeds”.

first of all it's Bayer, second. going for a 2°/3°/4°... generation makes them lose their genetic resistance to specific pesticides; this is not viable economically, otherwise farmers would go for a second round out of the seeds they collected! they spend millions/billions of USD on seeds for a reason

i don't like monocultures or "closed source science" but this talk about Monsanto being evil is rather weak and kept by people who think organics are the solution to sustainability; meanwhile they use mores pesticides/herbicides/fungicides than GMO, they have authorization to even use synthetics by USDA (or whatever your country's forum) and they use more land... organic has much more less research on health outcomes and they have MUCH LESS specialized equipment to spray poison around in precise quantities down to 10 mililiters per 1 kilometer sq in some scenarios you find in GMO farms

I preordered one of these and it was pretty disappointing. It arrived half-dead, and the glow was imperceptible even in total darkness. That could be on the shipping, but for 50 bucks I was expecting something pretty dazzling.

Does anyone know how to buy them in Europe?

Introduction of glowing gene is a basic genetic modification, similar to "Hello, world!" in programming. Ask a biolab or do it yourself.

Given the response to more mundane petunia variants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_petunia), I strongly suspect you can't.

Europe isn’t anti-science. It’s more proven harmlessness vs dangerousness especially with food and living specimen.

Given the reaction time of politics and the industry I consider that a good thing.

If you want to see strong anti-science look at the current US administration.

I’m on mobile so trying to dig up the link is a pain, but the company is against commercial propagation/breeding, not personal propagation/breeding. Basically, be reasonable.

Note for others that it’s actually very difficult to accurately take a photo of the glow. They are overall quite “dim”, requiring near total darkness and eyes adapted to darkness for a bit to see. Unfortunately, if you expect what you see in the marketing materials, you’ll be disappointed. Cameras tend to either be unable to see the glow, or blow it way out of proportion. They are quite a bit above your typical glowing fungus though.

They can also be kinda finicky to grow until you learn what they need. Basically:

-Full sun. Internode length directly correlates with light received. I can make them “leggy” or ultra dense with my adjustable lights.

-Prefer cooler temperatures. They don’t seem to like high 80’s to 90’s. Seem to prefer 60-70 degrees F

-They happily survive the winter while inside, and can survive multiple years. Temps below 40F will cause them to start shutting down, with freezing/frost having a good chance to kill them.

-Need well drained soil. Straight potting soil will hold too much moisture for too long, causing root rot.

-Prefer bigger and deeper pots, like 10+”. I’d consider 6” the minimum

-Like being spoon fed fertilizer with waterings. Jack’s petunia feed is perfect.

-May be slightly sensitive to chlorine/chloramine in tap water. I suspect it contributes to some curious yellowing on the leaves. A bit of API stress coat takes care of that. This is good for other house plants as well.

-Sometimes the leaves will have curious yellowing (yellow veins, leaf tips) no matter what you do. It may just be how it is.

-Can be prone to fasciation (mutant flowers or stalks)

-When outside, can get bud worms that chew the flowers, leaves, or developing seed pods

-Fungus gnats can be an issue, especially when propagating cuttings.

-Susceptible to downy mildew (seen mostly in late summer/fall)

-They respond well to being chopped back every so often. I’ll occasionally remove 1/3rd to 2/3rds of their top mass. This also has the benefit of removing weight from the initially thin and weak stems (which thicken over time).

-Can be crossed with other petunias, and sometimes even tobacco. Note that pigments in the flowers from other petunia varieties block the glow, so they’ll be dimmer.

-Wild petunias (or whatever the ancestor plants are) rely on moths for pollination. You can get lots of seeds by manually pollinating the flowers.

-They tend to emit more fragrance at night (for attracting moths)

-The newest growth is the brightest, in particular the recently developed flowers that haven’t opened yet which truly look “glowing”. Normally the glow of most of the plant, is comparable to taking it outside into moonlight. The brightness will shift from day to day as well. Sometimes it’ll be much dimmer or brighter than normal.

reddit.com/r/FireflyPetunia/

If you want “cool glowing thing” but something less intensive, and momentarily much brighter, you may look into getting a glowing algae kit, like pyrofarms.com/

This seems less scary, but certainly more labor-intensive, than bioluminescence, where biological mechanisms are causing the glow.

Because the particles are injected into the plant but don't mess with the plant at a biological level, you're not going to be able to breed them. It's almost equivalent to painting their surface.

Injecting glow in the dark liquid into plants makes them glow in the dark... Blue dye sprayed on broccoli makes broccoli blue! Water wet, wind blows, sun rises!

This really reflects the prestige and institutional rigor of Nature these days.

If they've done the research to figure out what combination is durable and safe for the plants, then there is certainly some science there.

It's certainly more of an entertaining story than pushing the bounds of knowledge.

does anyone know how they encapsulate the strontium/europium doped particles so that it doesn't kill the plant?

I worry we’re in the beginning of the Stray timeline.

It looks cool I guess, but wouldn't it be easier and more reliable to just mix phosphorescent chemicals into the materials used to make a fake succulent? Succulents don't really do that much in terms of growth, and there are extremely realistic fakes already available.

I mean you might as well put some leds inside then.