This scares the bajeebers out of me .. seriously it does .. What do you think?

Hoping to give new meaning to the term “natural light,” a small group of biotechnology hobbyists and entrepreneurs has started a project to develop plants that glow, potentially leading the way for trees that can replace electric streetlamps and potted flowers luminous enough to read by.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05...

Scary. Don't tell the honeybees. They have enough problems already.

I am performing brain surgery tomorrow.
By the way, I have no medical training.

I don't see what the problem is.......

Well they can keep those in their own yards!

ugh.. not good

But on the other hand, one of these in my family room would probably be brighter reading light than those stupid, expensive, squiggly CFLs that the light bulb police have mandated.

Karen

The part that scares me the most is "biotechnology hobbyists".

Yes, that makes it even more scary!

And (obviously) my point exactly.

Check out the "second generation" genetic engineering tools.

"Talens" and "CRISPR" techniques are easier to use, faster and much cheaper than the old Agrobacterium-plasmid genengineering tools. They precisely insert or edit DNA, unlike the old "slam in some entire gene complex any old place and see what happens".

Allegedly, the new precise tools will be safer since they allow smaller change and encourage editing genes to match (for example) wild varieties of the SAME crop species, not transgenic DNA from bacteria. (I sound like an advertisement.)

CRISPR stands for:
clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats

I think that "Cas" stands for CRISPR-Associated protein Systems .

I found a company advertising "GE toolkits" for a few hundred dollars, and there are whole CRISPR libraries of plant DNA sequences already thoughtfully made available by the university that developed the tool.


http://www.genecopoeia.com/abo...
kits & reagents for do-it-yourself GE

"Precise Genome Editing Tools"

http://www.genecopoeia.com/pro...

Genome-CRISP™ CRISPR-Cas9 products and services

Fast CRISPR-Cas9 sgRNA design and cloning services. Validation and other related services also available for simple and fast targeted genomic editing.

Toolkits are only $599 ... or "$295 when purchased together with a sgRNA clone."

I'm not making this up! Hit the link below, then "To Order".
http://www.genecopoeia.com/pro...

Oh, well, the time and expense in developing GMO crops have always come from the regulatory process that mandates field tests and toxicity studies before releasing GE / GMO crops. Aside from this "hobbyist loophole" I had never heard of, those barriers still exist. I saw a list of HUNDREDS of licenses-to-test things like rice, wheat and potatoes that never made it to commercial release. I wonder whether they failed the field trials (and why?) or just did not have the profit potential of corn & soybeans and sugar beets.

One last thing to sleep on: the CRISPR GE tools work as well on humans as on plants.
Unlike the old Agrobacterium-plasmid GE tools. They are already working on things like sickle-cell anemia and (I think) cystic fibrosis.


The human-gene-editing toolkit is 30% off today! (Should I add it to the Coupon Forum? )
http://www.genecopoeia.com/pro...

"Sure, the future is like having a hive of bees live in your head. But there it is!"

I've got a sinking feeling that there are more of these basement mad scientists and odds are, something is going to get away from them. It's unfathomable that there is nothing in place to oversee this kind of biotechnology.

>> It's unfathomable that there is nothing in place to oversee this kind of biotechnology.

Actually, there is, at least for producing GMO crops.

The geek on the left looks so much like "Sheldon" in "Big Bang Theory" that I was sure at first that it had to be an April Fools Joke. I thought that even universities had to meet all kinds of "no leakage" regulations, at least for their field trials.

Wow. I don't know what else to say.

But there is nothing stopping anyone with the money to do this! I don't see anywhere on those sites that you require any kind of credentials to purchase the equipment!

Very scary!

This is different from tissue culture, but I thought one would need a sterile lab
to do these?

>> one would need a sterile lab

I think that plant tissue culture and a sterile lab would just be starting points. Maybe their definition of "hobbyists" means people with time on their hands, but access to a well-equipped lab.

Just what we need more light pollution! And what if these glowing plants become invasive!? Then we will have a serious problem on our hands!

I like them, ever since I've grown bioluminescent mushrooms I got hooked on natural glowing organisms.

I want the glowing rose, but for $150 I hope the seeds it produces have glowing offspring and cuttings as well, otherwise its a waste of money.

Imagine a yard of glowing dandelions and clover, wow that would be pretty, and both are important pollen sources for bees but most people kill them, so a reason to keep them around.

RickCorey said:>> It's unfathomable that there is nothing in place to oversee this kind of biotechnology.

Actually, there is, at least for producing GMO crops.

The geek on the left looks so much like "Sheldon" in "Big Bang Theory" that I was sure at first that it had to be an April Fools Joke. I thought that even universities had to meet all kinds of "no leakage" regulations, at least for their field trials.

Lol @ Sheldon :D