First, animals that flow in the dark and then, updates on other ‘glow in the dark’ projects.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) has produced a video about animals that glow in the dark, here’s more from their August 14, 2017 news release on EurekAlert,
Fireflies, frogs, jellyfish, mushrooms and even parrots have the ability to emit light from their bodies. These creatures use either bioluminescence or fluorescence to put on their light shows.
Their YouTube video description provides links to more information,
What’s the difference between fluorescence and bioluminescence? We illuminate the biochemical distinctions. ↓↓More info and references below↓↓
Special thanks to everyone who shared their amazing glowing animal footage with us.
Be sure to check out Jelly Club’s YouTube page for more stunning jelly videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/JellyClu…
To learn more about Marc Zimmer’s research at Connecticut College and to find more great info and images involving GFP, visit his website: http://www.conncoll.edu/ccacad/zimmer…
To see more luminescent creatures photographed by NOAA, visit their Ocean Explorer webpage: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explora…
And don’t forget to watch the Wellcome Trust’s video to learn all about those wild blue nematode worms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAw5r…
Even more brilliant references:
First naturally-fluorescing frog found in Argentina | C&EN
Glowing mushroom’s mechanism unmasked | C&EN
Novel roles for GFP | C&EN
Spider Seduction Requires UV Light | C&EN
Naturally occurring fluorescence in frogs | Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
Mechanism and color modulation of fungal bioluminescence | Sci. Adv.
Live cell imaging of PC3 prostate cancer cells | Figshare
Updates on a previous glowing plants and animals posting
In a May 5, 2013 posting I featured a Kickstarter campaign for a synthetic biology project focused on plants that emit light in the dark. I also mentioned Eduardo Kac (pronounced Katz) and his art project/transgenic bunny called Alba. At the time, I did not realize that Alba had been declared dead in 2002 adding more controversy to an already controversial topice according to Kristen Philipkoski in an Aug. 12, 2002 article (how did I miss this article in 2013?) for Wired magazine (Note: Links have been removed),
Alba, the glowing rabbit that made headlines two years ago for being, well, a glowing rabbit, has met an untimely death, according to the French researcher who genetically engineered her.
Alba the glowing rabbit was 4 years old. Or 2-1/2, depending on who’s talking.
The bunny died about a month ago for reasons that are not clear, said Louis-Marie Houdebine, a genetic researcher at France’s National Institute of Agronomic Research.
“I was informed one day that bunny was dead without any reason,” Houdebine said. “So, rabbits die often. It was about 4 years old, which is a normal lifespan in our facilities.”
Alba was an albino rabbit engineered by splicing the green fluorescent protein (GFP) of a jellyfish into her genome. Houdebine said he did not believe the GFP gene played a role in the animal’s demise.
Eduardo Kac, the artist who created a flurry by making her a work of art, doesn’t buy it, however.
First, Alba’s not 4, she’s 2-1/2, Kac says (a rabbit’s lifespan is up to 12 years), because she was bred by Houdebine specifically for him in January 2000.
Houdebine says he simply picked a rabbit with a gentle disposition that was already in his lab.
Second, he believes Houdebine might be declaring the bunny gone in order to put an end to a two-year, unwelcome barrage of media attention.
If she really is dead, Kac will never realize the final phase of his project, which was to take Alba home and keep her as a pet.
Kac says he and Houdebine originally collaborated on the GFP bunny project, until Houdebine’s director put the kibosh on it.
“My director did not understand,” Houdebine said. “He said I should not give the rabbit (to someone) outside the lab.”
Houdebine said that yes, they spoke about preliminary plans for Kac to use the bunny for his project and take it to an art show in Avignon. But he denies he bred an animal specifically for Kac.
Houdebine says he would not have agreed to engineer one animal specifically for any artist.
This disputed point has led fellow artists and critics to question whether Kac can rightly take credit for the Alba project.
But Kac insists that Houdebine did, in fact, agree to make the bunny specifically for him.
Kac found out sometime in mid-2000 that Houdebine’s director had a problem with the project and would not allow the rabbit to be taken from the lab.
Houdebine was initially apologetic, Kac said. But after an article ran on the front page of the Boston Globe on Sept. 17, 2000, their relationship cooled.
Houdebine and his director were opposed to the now-famous, brilliantly glowing photograph of Alba. They and other researchers say the rabbit doesn’t actually glow so brightly and uniformly.
“Kac fabricated data for his personal use,” Houdebine said. “This is why we totally stopped any contact with him.”
“The scientific fact is that the rabbit is not green,” he said. “He should have never published that. This was very disagreeable for me.”
Kac believes the scientists were simply afraid of public criticism. Meanwhile, he wanted to do the opposite – to encourage discourse on the transgenic rabbit.
“This director refuses to participate openly in a debate about what is done with public money,” he said. “It’s very easy to fear and reject what you don’t know. As long as they continue to isolate themselves, this mistrust will continue.”
The eyes and ears of the rabbit are green under ultraviolet light, Houdebine said, but the fur does not glow, because it’s dead tissue that doesn’t express the gene. Only if the rabbit were shaved would the body glow, he said.
Philipkosk’s article provides some insight into the interface between art and science and is worth reading in its entirety if you have the time.
I’ve also found an update for the glowing plants Kickstarter campaign in an April 20, 2017 article by Sarah Zhang for The Atlantic (Note: Links have been removed),
The latest update came quietly on Tuesday night [April 18, 2017?]. “We’re sorry to say that we have reached a significant transition point,” wrote the Glowing Plant project’s creator, Antony Evans. This “transition point” was more of an endpoint: The project had run out of money. The quest to genetically engineer a glow-in-the-dark plant was no more.
Four years ago, the Glowing Plant project raised nearly half a million dollars on Kickstarter, easily blowing past its initial ask of $65,000. Of course it did. The vision it presented was such potent fantasy. “What if,” Evans asked over swelling music in the pitch video, “we use trees to light our streets instead of street lamps?” What if you could get lighting without electricity? What if the natural world glowed like in Avatar?
This romantic vision so perfectly encapsulated the promises of synthetic biology, a field that treats the natural world as another system to be designed and engineered. In this case, synthetic biology became a possible solution to one of the world’s most pressing energy problems: electricity generation. Plus, it sounded really damn cool.
The Kickstarter campaign only promised a small, potted glowing plant to it backers, and I doubt many backers actually harbored illusions about trees lighting up the night sky soon. But backing the project was a small way to buy into a much grander vision.
At a time when “genetically modified organism,” or GMO, is such a poisoned phrase, the project’s crowdfunding success seemed to suggest that a pervasive if vague distrust of genetic modification might be countered by the sense of wonder for a glowing plant. (As the Kickstarter campaign grew, though, environmental groups raised questions and the crowdfunding site later banned giving away genetically modified organisms.)
The team also encountered the hard realities of engineering even a small plant that glows. “We did not anticipate some of the unknown technical challenges that we would get into,” Evans told me. (Plenty of scientists at the time were skeptical of the project’s timeline, though.) Evans is an MBA with a background in mobile apps, though his two original cofounders, who have both since left the project, had backgrounds in synthetic biology.
To get the plant to glow well, the research team had to insert six genes. But they never could get all six in at once. At best, some plants glowed very dimly. (The photo above of the glowing plant is a long exposure, making it appear much brighter than it actually is.) Evans says that he realizes now trying to insert six genes into a complex organism like a plant—rather than single-celled bacteria or yeast—was premature.
“I’m really afraid of disappointing that 16-year-old who saw this and imagined a bright wonderful future, of jading and disappointing people,” he says. Despite a few angry backers asking for a refund, most of the comments under the Kickstarter update so far have been supportive. The project had been providing regular, detailed updates on the difficulty of engineering the plants. The latest update was its 67th.
Zhang’s article goes on to detail other synthetic biology projects, which are showing some promise.
When you take this work into consideration with CRISPR-CAS9 and the beginnings of genetic germline editing, the question has to be asked: Will public discussion (if there’s any) be considered upstream (early in the process) or downstream (after the work has been done)? Public engagement professionals tend to favour upstream discussions, i.e., before people start demanding fear-based policy.
For more about the latest CRISPR-CAS9 work,