Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting | Hacker News Reader

Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

blog.suny.edu

116 pointsbrahadeesh61 comments

The processes involved are orders of magnitude below the scale needed to produce usable light. And in the plants it's been tested in, it's also fatal after a short time. These aren't trivial problems, and they're not going to be solved by a designer photoshopping a concept.

Exactly, I once did the calculation, they use the protein luciferase, which requires 1 molecule of Lucferin and 1 molecule of ATP per photon produced! That means if you were to produce say 200 lm (about the output of a 40W incandescent light bulb) you'd need kilo's of ATP and Luciferin a week. Don't expect useful light.

Doing plausibility calculations from another direction--

Let's say that we want to have a glowing forest. The glowing trees will absorb sunlight from a certain area and emit it over the same area with a certain efficiency.

Photosynthesis has an efficiency of between 0.1% and 1%. I don't know what the efficiency of glowing is, so let's assume it's 10%. So your plants will illuminate the area with about 0.01%-0.1% of the intensity of the light which they absorb.

Full daylight is about 100,000 lux, so your forest will be illuminated to somewhere around 10-100 lux, which is somewhere between "twilight" and "a poorly lit room".

It gets even worse if you want your plants to illuminate a larger area than they themselves cover: if you have a plant illuminating (say) 10x more area than it covers (a tree in the middle of an open field, or next to a road), you're down to 1-10 lux, optimistically.

Only kilos? Compared to bamboo that actually sounds feasible.

(warning: I am not a biologist)

The problem is that generating ATP requires sun or sugar in plants (depending on the specific metabolic process involved), and that the total amount of sugar produced during the day as part of photosynthesis is tiny relative to the amount of ATP necessary to fuel the light at night.

Consider that humans burn 100-150 kilos of ATP daily (according to Wikipedia). This is only possible because we are recycling ATP continuously, fueling the recycling process with sugar and oxygen that we consume at rates several orders of magnitude higher than what a 20 year old tree could produce in the same period.

I can't find numbers for peak sugar production in plants, but considering how many maple trees it takes to make a single small container of maple syrup, I think this is a reasonable statement to make for now. I will stand corrected if someone has good numbers. :)

Well apparently a tree can permanently sequester "up to 48 pounds" of carbon per year (numbers are unclear, some mix up carbon and CO2, bamboo is more, but it makes a good ballpark max). Let's assume a tree that glows instead of growing for simplicity. 48 pounds, times 30/6 to get the number of ATP produced per carbon atom, times 507/12 to account for how much heavier ATP is than carbon, comes out to 12.6 kilograms of recycled ATP per day.

One order of magnitude, I stand corrected :)

Well, 1 kg of ATP is about 2 moles, and since this is ATP->AMP (10.9 kcal/mol) that's about 21.8 kcal, ignoring other upkeep.

Basically 1kg ATP is 21.8 kilocalories

Reminds me of a "design concept" for a little Nest-shaped box to stick on your window and magically cancel out all street noise. I'm pretty sure this is actually impossible, and is the equivalent of drawing a pegasus and saying "I have this great concept for a novel form of transportation!" i.e. more or less not worth anyone's time, since it's fantasy.

Possible in a controlled lab environment if you can destructively interfere the sound, but it's gonna depend on the sounds as well as knowing the location of the listener

Here it is, for reference. I could imagine it possible in the lab, and I'm not an audio engineer but the whole thing is completely implausible.

And sites like Gizmodo don't bring any critical thinking and just repeat the claims verbatim.

http://gizmodo.com/a-stick-on-speaker-that-uses-your-windows...

Wouldn't it be simpler to just genetically engineer humans to have better night vision? :P

This over-hyped crap again? Humbug!

Call me when someone solves the REAL problem, which is the energy budget needed to make the amount of light people actually want.

That'll probably involve some way to shunt externally-generated electrical power into the tree.

Seriously. I saw a video from a major oil company (Exxon IIRC) sponsoring a demo day. "We want to power the cities of the future" it said. Those cities were dozens of skyscrapers filled with electricity -- people watching giant televisions, using giant iPads, every thing in their home, work and street just glowing.

They way I see it, it's not going to completely replace street lighting. It's going to supplement available light, thus reducing our energy consumption among other benefits like producing oxygen. I'm especially excited about the possibility of genetically modifying trees that produce edible stuff to have bio luminescence, that'd be pretty cool.

Serious question - what happens in fall when the leaves fall off the trees? Also, with a simple light bulb, or even lamp post, it can be replaced quickly and cheaply. (OK, maybe not cheaply for the whole lamp post, but relatively easily.) But planting a tree takes years for the tree to grow. This doesn't seem realistic to me, though it does seem really cool.

Also, how much light do they give off? All of the images on the post are computer generated. I'd like to see a photo of this actually working.

The embedded video does have some footage of an actual plant glowing, but it's tiny. :(

This probably should not completely replace street lamps, but could help better light some areas that are naturally dark and shady. Trees, instead of concealing the streetlights, would give off some light.

Consider evergreen grasses that could probably be made to glow, too. Such grass could nicely light up park lanes at night. Slightly glowing evergreen bushes growing along a walkway could help one walk at night.

Also, consider how helpful such a natural illumination would be during a power outage, especially when it happens due to a natural disaster. The light might be faint, but it will help people orient themselves, help rescue helicopters recognize the terrain, etc.

These would look wicked cool down the sides of my driveway - it doesn't need to light the whole thing, but it acts as landing lights... makes it light enough to tell where you're going at least, even if you couldn't read a book by them.

Our world will finally look like the Matrix with green glow coming from the trees everywhere.

I remember backing a kickstarter project back in 2013 which accomplished the same thing on a small plant. As of today, it barely emits enough light and it's all but ready for production. Check it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-pla...

I too backed this project! Disappointed by the output, but still happy to see it reach production.

What is "enough" light?

That's a super cool idea.

I do wonder about unintended consequences. Invasive glowing trees might wreak havoc on ecosystems, especially on tree dwelling nocturnal creatures. At least they'd be easy to spot :)

Its highly unlikely that these plants would ever succeed as an invasive species because the energy consumption required to glow puts the plant at a massive disadvantage. I ordered something similar from a kickstarter a few months ago:

http://www.glowingplant.com/

They say that within a couple generations, the glowing feature quickly disappears due to natural selection.

Actually quite a few scientists tried to stop that kickstarter because of the dangers it could prove to the ecosystem:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2013/jun/0...

They didn't really outline what dangers exactly it could prove to the ecosystem.... I'm sure there are some, but it's hardly obvious. It's not like the gene will stick around without human effort.

> They didn't really outline what dangers...

Anyone who's had to muck with a giant piece of spaghetti code realizes how dicey it is to start changing things you don't really understand.

Projects like this and maybe tens of thousands of others in the future could interact to create strange changes in the wild that no one would be able to completely explain.

Maybe I'm just too much of a Luddite, or just an idiot (OK, I'm a complete fucking idiot), but projects like this and the thousands that are sure to follow give me an impending sense of doom.

Organisms aren't computer programs. The point raised earlier about the added energy drain being a handicap to natural selection is spot-on.

That article seems mostly seems worried about future projects. And I'm not sure what scientists you're talking about. Is it this line:

> 116 organizations have called for a moratorium on any release of synthetic organisms. The UN convention on Biological Diversity has urged countries to exercise precaution in any release of synthetic organisms to the environment.

Well if I click on the link I find a very interesting sentence:

> With synthetic biology, instead of swapping existing genes from one species to another (as in “ traditional” genetic engineering), scientists can write entirely new genetic code on a computer, "print" it out and then insert it into living organisms — or even try to create life from scratch.

Swapping a couple genes from one species to another sounds exactly like what they typically do to make a species glow.

And yet after that sentence they seem to change their definition of synthetic biology to include both those categories.

It tastes like doublespeak to me. "Companies are doing not just X but Y! Ban Y! (also we defined Y to include X)"

I think that statement is a response to Venter's synthetic bacteria.

"Synthetic biology" in technical usage refers to custom sequences which are written on a computer then chemically assembled ex vivo. This is a widely used technique. It is distinct from the technique of extracting and amplifying a sequence from one organism and inserting it into another, although the results produced can be similar.

Source: I work in a molecular biology lab.

So let's say there's a gene that might be useful to me. I have a listing of base pairs, but it would be very expensive to extract DNA/RNA from actual specimens. I chemically assemble an exact recreation and inject it. Is this synthetic biology?

Yep! Although the result might be the same, the technique used is synthetic biology. Usually the synthetic route is more expensive but a lot simpler.

So would PCRing a mutation into a gene be synthetic biology, or only if you wrote out the sequence on a computer before buying primers?

Similar work to the 2010 Cambridge University student iGEM team - http://2010.igem.org/Team:Cambridge

Here is their research for bioluminescent trees - http://2010.igem.org/Team:Cambridge/Tools/Lighting

This doesn't sound great, what about all the tree dwelling critters that would be unable to hide or sleep?

They could sleep on another tree.

Indeed, I did incorrectly assume this could/would be in all the trees on the street.

I think it depends on city density. Many streets in SF have about as many trees as light poles, so you'd probably have to replace all those with the glowing ones to make enough light.

That was my thought as well. Wildlife has adapted to the city life, but changing how trees work will definitely have unintended consequences.

If like the other comments note, the impact is lost within a few generations, it's of less risk. However, if that's not true and it starts to spread, we could be looking at a serious problem.

Personally, I don't know of how much benefit this is given the low consumption of LEDs. The trees will need energy from somewhere, so their requirements for soil/nutrients will likely be a lot greater than the current tree population, resulting in need to fertilize/upkeep. This could end up being a lot more expensive than LED light poles using electricity.

Environmental impact from the need for more nutrients/fertilizer could be significant as well.

How much energy would a tree expend producing light? Would that kill it? If not, what extra input (in terms of nutrients, care, etc) would it need? Would these trees cross-pollinate those not intended to glow? What environmental impact might that have outside cities?

Lots of questions.

So while we humans use a massive amount of generated electricity to defeat darkness, Jellyfish create their own light deep underwater without solar panels, wind turbines, or hydroelectric dams. Instead, the organism generates power completely autonomously.

They don't need energy, they just generate it autonomously. Why didn't we think of this earlier? The logic is flawless!

Maybe I follow YC stuff too much but it seems this be an attempt to build momentum for the YC company working on this? http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/11/glowing-plant-is-one-of-y-c...

I'm not working for that startup or any startup for that matter.

There are a lot of problems with this that have been outlined in all these comments, and 99% are true.

I would instead take advantages of photoautrophic organisms that already are bioluminescent like Dinoflagellate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinoflagellate

They can have a startling effect in large numbers and feed themselves with daylight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence#mediaviewer/Fi...

Some video of their effect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSROHwGaLCg

I saw this effect off the beach near me a few weeks ago, it was quite captivating as the breakers were lit up as if by an underwater neon (I actually thought it was an artificial light show of some kind at first). But although deeply impressive, it certainly wouldn't have had a meaningful effect on visibility of the neighbouring land. Moonlight is much more effective.

Why not leave the night sky dark? It's like we have this 30,000 year old phobia that we can't ditch... there are no more tigers lurking in the darkness.

Seriously, I'd much rather have night vision prosthetic eyes and not make trees into light sources.

Even if there were, wouldn't a more elegant solution be to engineer glowing tigers?

...perhaps not.

William Blake would probably agree http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172943 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyger

Because we light our cities to help us move around, not from some fear of predators.

I heard on NPR they are trying to bring back the American Chestnut, which is being killed by a fungus from Asia. To be able to plant this genetically modified tree outside of test beds will take 5-10 years in just regulation issues alone. So even if they made this bioluminecent tree tomorrow (Which in itself is impossible) we wouldn't see these on the side of the rode for another 10+ years.

Luciferin isn't what makes jellyfish glow, that's GFP. GFP, at least, requires a specific light input to cause the glow (UV at a particular wavelength depending on the molecule). I don't know about Luciferin, though.

luciferin makes the jellyfish glow, by creating the photon that gets transferred to (and illuminates) the GFP.

Luciferin is converted to a reactive intermediate by the enzyme luciferase in a reaction that uses ATP (produced by mitochondria), this intermediate reacts with O2 to produce light.

Luciferin is what makes fireflys glow. Luciferin really produces light from chemical energy. GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) is just fluorescent, not luminescent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciferin

Turning off the lights takes a chainsaw and ten minutes of labor per light. Turning them back on again takes transplantable saplings and a 20 year wait. Some ideas get less elegant the longer you look at them.

FAQ on a similar glowing plant effort: http://bioglowtech.com/FAQ.html

it seems to me that if this can be pulled off, it would be Nobel worthy. I mean, it would not be less cool than a blue LED, would it?

LEDs are vastly brighter than bioluminescence. And engineered bioluminescence isn't actually new. It's one of the easiest things to engineer, and it's one of the first things the gene tech people did when they started playing with this stuff.

This 'designer/architect' seems more like a self-promoter.

There's an entire class of 'designers' who see themselves as gifted idea people, but in fact they lack the scientific literacy to realise why some ideas aren't good engineering.

Real designers do clever stuff that works in reality, not just as a concept in an illustration.

While I'm all for high quality bioengineering as a future trend, I suspect it's quite a bit harder to replace current technology with it than this 'designer' thinks.

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