Tropicals & Tender Perennials: bioluminescent gene manipulation, 1 by bwilliams

bwilliams wrote:
Well I had wrote a thread months ago on gene manipulation and learned some very interesting information from that. I have thought of the idea of a glow in the dark banana and or elephant ear. I looked into it more recently and found a guy who said he would be willing to do the work. This would be if I provided funding for a year of lab research and that I get the proper patients and certificates which make it legal to make and sell such a plant.
After talking to another friend who works in the same field he said in most cases the plants do not show well unless they have white sections in the flower of leaves. He also said it would take him 1 to 2 year to produce such a plant and thousand on thousands of dollars. What maybe produced is a glow in the dark plant but how well would it glow and would it be worth while? Well for now I doubt it. I did find it interesting that the option is available if your willing to spend the money. I had already picked out candidates for test subjects Musa Ae Ae or the lime form of Siam Ruby as well as Colocasia Elena these would most likely be the best subjects to use in a experiment like this.

Another idea which I had thought of but am sure it would not be allowed to be produced would be to take a mild form of mosaic virus and add this gene to it. The idea their would be that you could spread the glowing gene easily into other plants. I am not sure if it would work and I doubt anyone would be willing to sign off on such a idea but it did run through my brain which I may pay dearly for even speaking it out loud spreading viruses and such.

On another note I recently picked up a Guinness book of world records and was amazed to see pictures of glowing rabbits pigs and mice listed in it. Apparently for each new animal genetically modified with the florescent or bioluminescent gene you get to be in Guinness book of world records they have a whole new section for this topic in the book. I am sure will be hearing a lot more of this in the very near future.

This message was edited Dec 15, 2007 3:06 AM