{"id":182720,"date":"2024-02-14T19:24:13","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T01:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/these-glow-in-the-dark-flowers-will-make-your-garden-look-like-avatar"},"modified":"2024-02-14T19:24:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T01:24:13","slug":"these-glow-in-the-dark-flowers-will-make-your-garden-look-like-avatar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/these-glow-in-the-dark-flowers-will-make-your-garden-look-like-avatar","title":{"rendered":"These Glow-in-the-Dark Flowers Will Make Your Garden Look Like Avatar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/these-glow-in-the-dark-flowers-will-make-your-garden-look-like-avatar3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The sci-fi dream that gardens and parks would one day glow like Pandora, the alien moon in <em>Avatar<\/em>, is decades old. Early attempts to splice genes into plants to make them glow date back to the 1980s, but experiments emitted little light and required special food.<\/p>\n<p>Then in 2020, scientists made a breakthrough. Adding genes from luminous mushrooms yielded brightly glowing specimens that needed no special care. The team has refined the approach\u2014writing last month they\u2019ve increased their plants\u2019 luminescence as much as 100-fold\u2014and spun out a startup called Light Bio to sell them.<\/p>\n<p>Light Bio <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2023\/09\/24\/youll-soon-be-able-to-buy-genetically-engineered-glow-in-the-dark-petunias\/\">received USDA approval in September<\/a> and this month announced the first continuously glowing plant, named the firefly petunia, is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prnewswire.com\/news-releases\/bioluminescent-plants-are-now-even-brighter-light-bio-to-begin-selling-firefly-petunias-to-consumers-with-usda-approval-302050054.html\">officially available for purchase<\/a> in the US. The petunias look and grow like their ordinary cousins\u2014green leaves, white flowers\u2014but after sunset, they glow a gentle green. The company is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.light.bio\/\">selling the plants for $29 on its website<\/a> and says a crop of 50,000 will ship in April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sci-fi dream that gardens and parks would one day glow like Pandora, the alien moon in Avatar, is decades old. Early attempts to splice genes into plants to make them glow date back to the 1980s, but experiments emitted little light and required special food. Then in 2020, scientists made a breakthrough. Adding genes [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1506,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}