kwtaylor

Great question! One thing we want to experiment with is to see if there is an optimal way to get the plants to glow. For example now that we have more resources, we can ask questions like could you get brighter glowing on younger leaves or older leaves? Since our goals are to bring the backers and public along for the ride, hopefully you'll be able to follow the experiments as we work to answer these types of questions.

One of the reasons for being open and transparent is to give people further away a chance to get involved and contribute in whatever way they can. Don't let distance from us stop you!

Howdy, The system we're working with takes an aldehyde, FMNH2, and the luciferase enzyme. These are the three 'levers' to focus on to try and get satisfactory glowing. One thing we are putting a lot of thought into is how to bring you (the backers and the public) along for the ride so you can see what the difficulties and challenges are. Kyle

Haha - Avatar certainly got me thinking! I must confess - in high school I tried putting GFP into african violets - it failed and knowing what I know now it should never have worked, but that helped inspire me to pursue a career in plant molecular biology. Part of why I joined this project was the chance to inspire others!

Howdy, as a starting point we'll be using the bacterial lux operon which contains 5 genes. We'll insert them into the plant via biolistics method i.e. shoot the genes into the plant. We will test genes inserted into the chloroplast genome and the nuclear genome to see which is better. Taking an operon like this and modifying it to be expressed in the eukaryotic nuclear genome is being made much easier by advances in molecular and synthetic biology.