droryomr

A bit about me: 35 years old. Married (to a NanoTechnology Prof' in the Technion, Israel) with one 2.5 years old kid on one on the way.

Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Tel-Aviv University

Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine & HHMI

List of peer-reviewed publications: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=drory+o

Agree!

Hi, we will try night/dark promotion of the heterological expression of the Luciferase genes. This will allow the plant to accumulate the fuel (luciferin) during the day and will be less wasteful (one more way we hope to get better light output). Expression levels change from one creature to the next - one can only hope strong promoter in one plant will work the same in other plants. Roses are pretty ;-) Once we got the best design in arabidopsis we will try to transform roses (don't think we could optimize it much for roses..)

Well - There are several proteins involved. You can think about proteins as small/nano scale machines. We will insert the code to produce several of those machines into plants.

One machine is Luciferase - it breaks down a fuel molecule called Luciferin to produce light (photons). The other machines will be generating the fuel from molecules already in the plant

the night scene in AVATAR with the touch based plant bioluminescence were a definite inspiration for me :-)

Fun Fact: Peter Diamandis (Xprize and Singularity University) sent the kickstarter info to AVATAR director James Cameron - hopefully he will be a backer too!