I got my firefly petunias from light.bio around a month or so ago and they’re now just starting to take off. This picture was taken in a dark room with no windows, though I’m sure the phone brightened it up a bit. They aren’t as bright as I was imagining, but I still find them neat.

@houseplants

#plants #flowers

  • movies@lemmy.worldEnglish
    141·
    2 个月前

    I got some Spring of last year! I have ‘em outside. Not terribly impressive but a fun novelty.

    • Matt Clifton@en.osm.townOP
      3·
      2 个月前

      @movies Aye! I agree. It would be cool if one day they could make them maybe 10 times as bright with other color options. Yours lasted through the winter? That is nice to hear.

      • DoxatekEnglish
        01·
        2 个月前

        It’s not a light bulb lol. If it were ten times as bright the plant would exhaust it’s own energy and die

        • Matt Clifton@en.osm.townOP
          1·
          2 个月前

          @Doxatek lol. This picture oversells how bright they are. A guesstimate on my part would be a 10x increase would bring it up to the level of a glow in the dark sticker.

          • DoxatekEnglish
            2·
            2 个月前

            That’s true. Fluorescence is just metabolically expensive.

  • swelter_spark@reddthat.comEnglish
    6·
    2 个月前

    I’m glad these are still being sold. I first read about them last year, but was moving at the time. I’d really like to get some.

  • fossilesqueMEnglish
    3·
    2 个月前

    God, I want some of these so bad. They are so fun. I gotta sort the plants I have still haha.

  • zod000@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    2 个月前

    I got my wife some of those last year. I wish they had lasted longer, but we couldn’t find a balance of sunlight that they liked. And yeah, they not all that bright, but still super cool.

  • ssillyssadass@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    2 个月前

    Those look damn cool. I’m not really a plant person, but I’d be sure to try to change if I could get some of those. Doesn’t look like they ship to Europe though.

    • Lommy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 个月前

      I’m afraid no reputable seller does, as the EU has a ban on gene-edited organisms like plants and fish. Understandable but i’d sure would have liked to have a tank filled with Glofish

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      251·
      2 个月前

      depends on your definition of genetically modified. you’d be hard pressed to find any plant that hasn’t been selectively bred, spliced and adapted by humans.

      • acockworkorangeEnglish
        48·
        2 个月前

        That’s a disingenuous argument. You can’t selectively breed an completely foreign gene into an organism. I can’t believe this even has to be said, but I guess the GMO lobby gets to people more than I thought.

          • DoxatekEnglish
            1·
            2 个月前

            Good luck breeding a plant until it replicates jellyfish DNA for fluorescence.

              • DoxatekEnglish
                2·
                2 个月前

                I mean yeah if you can cause a specific selective pressure for the fluorescence trait and then breed the plant for 100 million years I guess you have a shot haha

                Those fish are definitely badass though

                It’s crazy how even though the process will take that long theoretically I can make this gene insertion in a single day with modern transformation and gene editing tools

                • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.socialEnglish
                  1·
                  2 个月前

                  You can shave off most of that 100 million years using variation breeding. No need to wait around for random chance to happen or to fiddle with genes manually when a little radiation can trigger as many mutations as we want.

        • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          12·
          2 个月前

          No one lobbied me lol. They cross bred a petunia with a mushroom. It’s roughly the same concept as when humans bred maize.

          • DoxatekEnglish
            2·
            2 个月前

            Not really. They transformed plant cells in a lab with GFP from a mushroom and established a stable transgenic line. This can’t be done without modern techniques. Not the same as breeding them

          • acockworkorangeEnglish
            2·
            2 个月前

            No they didn’t crossbred it. Fungi and plants are so far apart in the tree of life that suggesting this is ludicrous. You can’t get a fungal spore and place it in a petunia’s flower and get a hybrid.

            DNA manipulation in a lab and selective breeding are fundamentally different. It’s silly to try to compare both.

    • artifex@lemmy.zipEnglish
      141·
      2 个月前

      I think it’s a fair concern in general but fine in this case since the company almost certainly edited in the lux operon which is one of the most well studied and understood gene switches out there. It and similar pathways have been used in many branches of science for decades. I think the novelty here is just that it’s in a consumer product instead.

      • DoxatekEnglish
        2·
        2 个月前

        In each seed this gene would segregate some wouldn’t express at all, some lower and if you did it more times more than likely the mutation would be lost

          • DoxatekEnglish
            2·
            2 个月前

            If the trait or edit is homozygous and you self pollinate the plant the trait will not be segregated out. If it is heterozygous you will get a mix.

            When transforming plants you can get hetero or homozygous edits both. I am unsure the genotype of the firefly petunias though.

            So if the edit is homozygous it is known as a pure line.

      • j4yt33@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        2 个月前

        I think the concern is more about cross-pollination, not seeds from the plant directly