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RE: Fluorescent Transgenic Ornamental Petunias: You Didn't Know You Wanted To Know About This
GFP is relatively easy, I mean, at least could be imagined, but...
Do you remember absolutely mindblowing Kickstarter idea with 3 genes, including luciferin?! (yes, the thing from Firefly)
It got $$$$ but it delivered nothing
Yep, I remember that one. Must not have worked well.
Sad story as one of the leading members even committed suicide due to pressure to create something impossible :(
Oh man, I didn't know about that. I don't know why it would be impossible, but it certainly would be a difficult feat of genetic engineering. The plant would use a lot of ATP up making FMNH2... You'd have to give it a variety of systems to compensate and supplement with a lot of extra specific nutrients... Hmm. Never really thought much about it.
It's been a long time since I read but as I remember 3 genes were necessary. They were able to put 1 gene in the right place and start the campaign.
The problem was with the remaining two that rejected to "express themselves". In addition, one of the products was not involved in regular plant metabolism.
Too bad we still don't have plants from Avatar movie
Yet! Perhaps we just need more exploration for more friendly genes. Expression of foreign genes is not always the easiest. Some proteins just struggle to fold. Perhaps the kinases of the plants just don't phosphorylate these proteins in the way that they need, or the host plants chaperones aren't able to assist in folding like those found in the organism the genes came from.
It still seems... reasonable that we could make something that would do this, perhaps not under the most ideal of conditions but hey... glowing shit is cool. Cooler if it glows on its own.