The fans of the movie "Avatar" are in luck. A team of researchers funded by the biotech startup Planta, has developed glow-in-the-dark plants using DNA extracted from fungi. In the future, they hope to be able to sell bright roses. A whole garden of natural light.
Everything stems from the discovery of bioluminescence in some fungi as a similar natural process in plants. This allowed the scientists to take the DNA of the fungus and create new plants that shine much brighter than has been possible with other techniques in the past.
So far they have only created one version of the tobacco plant, but they hope to be able to produce roses, and other garden flowers in the future that will shine brighter than was previously possible and throughout their life cycle.
The new plants are at least ten times brighter than previous attempts using firefly DNA, and the experiment was successfully completed without damaging the health of the plant that carries the glowing new DNA.
Reference: Plants with genetically encoded autoluminescence, DOI: 10.1038 / s41587-020-0500-9, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0500-9
