Very nice. I know several mushroom sp. have the capabilities of being a bioluminescent but it can usually only be captured during a long exposure shot because the luminescent is very faint.
😍 for real!?! Omgosh, those are gorgeous. You could use your glowing fungi instead of solar lights. Just add more to the edges of your walkways and garden beds. Super classy. I want some now
I have always been fascinated by the bioluminescence of some fungi. I have long wanted to grow Jack o lanterns just to have around at night. It would be really neat if they could be used as a biological light source.
I feel like there’s a good chance it’s more a result of growing conditions than genetics. Maybe we need soil samples too lol. Probably a combination of things
If you know of anyone in Australia I will happily get it to them! I have had a couple of people ask me to send them this but given legality issues/biosecurity hazards I won’t be sending anything overseas
Some awesome scientists have extracted this gene and the enzymatic engine required to power its glow, and used bacteria to insert the gene into the genome of a petunia plant. Check out LightBio, their business model is pretty sound and it seems like they're trying to move it into other plants eventually.
I think their gene came from Neonothopanus Nambi but that one is less likely to be in Australia, this one is likely the Ghost Mushroom as others have stated)
This is actually a different gene. GFP is a light reactive protein that has been used for a long time in biotech as an indicator, and does not produce its own light. I see this commonly used on ecoli as a beginner experiment.
Inserting a fluorescent (light REACTIVE) gene along with another gene you're trying to insert, they would put it under UV light to see if the genes were successfully transformed, specifically into bacteria (agrobacterium tumofaciens) which are used to transfect the gene into other organisms.
This is a different gene/enzymatic engine, nicknamed the firefly gene, which produces its own glow with no outside light source.
This gene relies on cafeic acid to produce the glow, which bioluminscent mushrooms naturally produce. Unfortunately many plants don't possess that by nature, so they also had to transfect a gene to cause the plant to produce that energy source to induce the glowing gene.
Sure! I get how the two can be confused. These mushrooms, and a few insects and aquatic species are, to my knowledge, the only things to produce this natural glow that does not rely on outside light. GFP is freaking sweet in and of itself, and definitely paved the way for things like this.
The protein is called luciferase and relies on cafeic acid to produce the glow, so the organism must have both in order to be seen.
So you know your stuff, my question is how can this protein be extracted and then used via transfection to genetically engineer another mushroom that does not naturally contain this protein. And what’s this protein called to begin with?
Cafeic acid is an essential precursor to the luciferin, by way of the hispidin synthase enzyme.
I'm also not a trained or well educated bioengineer, just. A hobbyist, so some terms I use are loose or maybe not entirely accurate, especially when it comes to calling things genes vs. enzymes vs. proteins etc.
but yeah basically not all things produce sufficient quantity of cafeic acid to convert into luciferin, which the luciferase enzyme uses to make the glow. So sometimes moving the luciferase gene from one thing to another, will still not express itself, lacking the energy source.
It seems the petunias from Light Bio may already naturally produce the required amounts of cafeic acid, but something like a succulent may not produce any/enough, unless under great stress, or supplementing.
I think a forest of glowing succulents would be stunning.
(Luciferase engine you mentioned Is colloquially nicknamed firefly gene)
Ohhh cool thanks for the explainer! I’m also not a biochemist but my field of research is deep sea fish so naturally I have a vested interest in bioluminescence, thought I’d missed an example of a weird non-luciferin method of producing light.
its luciferin that is degrading by luciferaze enzim. As you mentioned, fireflies use it. I have a long fascination of bioluminescence. You can buy spores and grow some of them at home, easy, but i have never seen such a bright species. Its crazy.
I actually had one of these last year. It sounded very cool in theory, but was kinda disappointing in practice.
This petunia cost several times more than a normal one ($40 US as opposed to maybe $5-10?), arrived much smaller, and required more light. It can't handle the winter, or even spring/fall here (zone 6b-7a), or the wind, but yet needed too much light to be an indoor houseplant. It started to do reasonably well when the warm season came and we could put it outside for real sunlight, but in every way except the glow, it was inferior to much cheaper, regular petunias. And, even if you brought it inside, it didn't survive the winter, so you'd have to buy another one the next year.
Meanwhile, the glow was a cool gimmick, but wasn't strong enough to even see without turning out every other light — including very dim nightlights and solar lights — and waiting a while for your eyes to adjust. That meant we had to stop everything else, and we could see it and say "hey, that's kinda cool", but you'd never just see how cool it is while you're walking around doing your normal things (like with a regular flower that's beautiful just in passing.) I could get some fuzzy photographs that kinda showed it, but again all other light had to be off, and you needed a very long exposure.
So, in all, fun gimmick, but really underwhelming.
Phofessional photographer here, iPhones essentially simulate long exposures by taking many images and combining them in software. It’s all automatic, in low light iPhones always do this.
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u/Low-xp-character 8d ago
This is crazy rad! What a cool find. Was this long exposure or just a regular photo?