Consumers in the United States can now pre-order a genetically engineered plant for their home or garden that glows continuously. At a base cost of US$29.00, residents of the 48 contiguous states can get a petunia (Petunia hybrida) with flowers that look white during the day; but, in the dark, the plant glows a faint green. Biotechnology firm Light Bio in Sun Valley, Idaho, will begin shipping a batch of 50,000 firefly petunias in April.

Engineered petunia emits a continuous green glow thanks to genes from a light-up mushroom.

  • Nyssa Sylvatica
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    189 months ago

    This is wild. It’s an annual but sometimes you can keep them alive longer. I wonder if they programmed a kill switch in so you can’t do vegetative propogation or sterilized it so you can’t produce seeds.

    • SteveOPM
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      99 months ago

      Hmmm… that’s an interesting concern. The article says the company doesn’t plan to crack down on those who might share with friends so it seems like they expect it to happen. I imagine it’s only a matter of time before someone someone is able to get seeds from the plant. Just imagine what could happen if they ended up in seedbombs.

      • @Sludgehammer
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        39 months ago

        There’s never been a commercially available plant variety that’s been genetically engineered to be sterile.

    • @Sludgehammer
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      49 months ago

      I wonder if they programmed a kill switch in so you can’t do vegetative propogation or sterilized it so you can’t produce seeds.

      Probably not, stopping vegetative propagation would require mucking around with root genes so it’d be a huge mess to keep the roots working correctly. As for sexual reproduction, despite all the fearmongering about “the terminator gene” there’s never been a commercially available plant genetically engineered sterile. In fact the technology never made it out of the early testing/seeing if it actually worked phase.

      They could however make the plant sterile through non-genetic engineering methods, like breeding a triploid. But that’d be kinda pointless since you could still just make cuttings.