San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 23, 2013
The maker community is a contemporary group of do-it-yourselfers who encourage all types of inventions. They focus on learning practical skills while applying them creatively and we’re now noticing this community gravitate toward bringing their ideas to life via crowdfunding. A subgroup within that community, the DIY Biology Movement, works on making projects using biology. Glowing Plant has worked for months on sequencing the DNA of plants to make them glow with bioluminescence genes, and has now pursued crowdfunding to raise the funds necessary to print the DNA and transform it into the target plant.
The Glowing Plant team is bringing their knowledge of applied science and genetics to the masses, and has developed a Maker Kit that allows anyone to make their own glowing plant at home. They showed off the Maker Kit at Bay Area’s Maker Faire last weekend with other like-minded makers and DIYers. The Maker Kit can be found on Glowing Plant’s Kickstarter page, and includes a copy of the Glowing Plant book, a full set of instructions and all the ingredients needed to transform a plant at home.
Within just three days of Glowing Plants’ six week crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, the project had reached its funding goal of $65,000. But Glowing Plants’ success did not end there; just a couple weeks later, the campaign had raised $300,000 and is currently sitting at almost $400,000 with just over two weeks remaining in the campaign.
“We’ve been so thankful that the Kickstarter community has been so supportive of our project and we’re constantly thinking of ways to show them our appreciation,” says Antony Evans, Co-Founder of the Glowing Plant Kickstarter project. “Because we reached our goal so quickly, everyone who supported our campaign at the $40 reward level and up will receive seeds to grow their very own glowing plants. Additionally, we’ve set a stretch goal at $400,000 and when it’s reached, my team and I will create glowing rose plants to all backers who have pledged at the $150 reward level and up.”
That’s not all Evans has planned for his campaign. He’s just introduced a new reward, rootcupPLANTER, which is perfect for growing the glowing plant seeds. In exchange for supporting Evans’ project, he and his team are offering awesome rewards such as stickers, t-shirts, seeds to grow glowing plants, actual glowing plants, vases, photo books, do-it-yourself maker kits, vials of personally coded DNA, and much more.
To learn more about Glowing Plant, visit http://bit.ly/GlowingPlantKS or find them on Facebook and Twitter @GlowingPlant. The project’s crowdfunding campaign will end on Friday, June 7 at 1:00am EST, so be sure to place all orders before then.
About Glowing Plant
Glowing Plant is a new team of Stanford-trained PhDs who are working towards creating sustainable light by creating plants that glow in the dark. Using Genome Compiler, printing DNA and transforming the DNA into the target plant, the team behind Glowing Plant is going to change the science behind lighting forever right in their Glowing Plant lab in California. To learn more about Glowing Plant, visit http://www.glowingplant.com, Like them on Facebook and Follow them on Twitter @GlowingPlant.
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/GlowingPlant/MakerKit/prweb10764383.htm.
Copyright©2012 Vocus, Inc.
All rights reserved