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.
In between life, we garden.
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Probably very unpopular opinion. I don’t get it how you could buy genetically modified plants.
-unpredictable impact on ecosystems
-uncontrolled spread through insects/seed
-no long term studies available
I really wish people would be more responsible with our environment.
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.
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.
Yes you can, it just takes a lot more effort to get the right random mutation.
Good luck breeding a plant until it replicates jellyfish DNA for fluorescence.
https://phys.org/news/2025-06-fish-biofluorescence-evolved-million-years.html
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
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.
It's still random chance. But you are of course right that you would get them faster than possible in what's typically considered natural.
No one really does this anymore though. Of course you can't select the radiation induced mutation or where or how many or how large or what you want it to do. Most give nothing useful whatsoever if they aren't just outright killed by the mutation.
You just would have to do literally billions of them and see if you can observe any type of desirable phenotype because there's no realistic way to do sequencing on that many.
Many traits are not regulated by single genes but on long pathways involving multi gene networks. These are complex and make it even more unlikely to obtain in any reasonable amount of time adding another layer of complexity
If you want a plant to glow and all you're doing hypothetically is irradiating them I think it would take much longer than you may initially expect.
Thank you for the enjoyable discussion by the way :)
Likewise! I know the idea isn't practical, I just love all the weirdness that comes with taking something that's only technically feasible and pushing that thought to extremes. XD
Hey, if you had funding you could totally go for it. I'm only familiar with likelihood of rare plant events because I'm always trying to get them in vain. Several years now with gene editing tools haha
No one lobbied me lol. They cross bred a petunia with a mushroom. It's roughly the same concept as when humans bred maize.
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
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.
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.
Some GMOs are approved and released before we fully understand their long-term ecological or health impacts. While short-term studies may show no harm, ecological processes unfold over decades.
Another thing is that introducing glowing flowers might make genetic modification seem harmless or trivial. This could lead to less critical public debate and a gradual erosion of caution in how such technologies are used.
According to the website, they can't reproduce by seed, only by division.
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
Is that still the case with gene splicing vs natural mutation?
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.
I think the concern is more about cross-pollination, not seeds from the plant directly
You don't need to plant them outside
Above
Don't eat them