What is Digg?96 Comments
- aggieandrew, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28Reminds me of a Deep Thought:
"If trees could scream, we probably wouldn't cut as many down...
Unless they screamed all the time, for no good reason." - longman2g, on 10/12/2007, -5/+31glows not grows
- Ace2005, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19Yea, i think it should glow when it has water, so you don't have to keep a plant on the edge of death to have a cool glowing effect
- KillerJ59J, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20I read grows the first time I read it, too. Anyone else?
- superfunkypants, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11The glowing does not take energy from the plant. When the plant is starved it starts expressing a particular protein. The plant has been genetically modified so that when that protein is expressed, Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP, found naturally in Jellyfish) is also expressed.
The key word here is "fluorescent". The energy of the "glowing" or "fluorescing" is coming from the light that is exciting the protein, not the plant. That is why you need special lighting conditions to see it. - mogebier, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Feed me Seymour...
- jeolmeun, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10"They discovered that when facing a threat like gypsy moth caterpillars, trees begin to defend themselves by sounding the alarm. A large variety of trees -including beeches, poplars, sugar maples, and red oaks- communicate with each other. Scientists believe the trees communicate by releasing chemicals called pheromones into the air. What they now know is that before insects attacking one tree can get to the tree next door, the second tree has already begun defending itself."
http://www.creationmoments.com/radio/transcript.php?t=130 - longman2g, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7farmers, gardeners, pretty much anybody in the botany field. No, glowing plants may not directly affect you, but in the long run it will cause food prices to go down because farmers can grow more, and if you claim that you don't eat plants, your a real man who eats meat, what do you think that cows eat? plants. if it costs less to care for cows, you get your steak cheaper too.
Just think for more than a quarter of a second before you post something. - longman2g, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7i'm guessing glowing takes energy, so you don't want your plants to be continually wasting power so it can glow all of the time.
- mxpxpx, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8i need some pictures
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5most plants just turn brown
- conigs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2006-03-07T100901Z_01_SIN308795_RTRUKOC_0_US-SINGAPORE.xml
The link is to some blog quoting verbatim the Reuters "article." At least give the ad revenue to the organization that actually wrote the piece. - KYDS3K, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5wow, if they could get babies to glow when then need changing or feeding, instead of crying, parents the world over would rejoice!
- chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Good for the people who are clueless about keeping plants alive. Like me.
- PGvildys, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I've killed too many plants. Finally, one that will tell me when I'm killing it before I actually kill it.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Didn't this happen some time ago (like 3 years or so).
I remember a a big story because the agriculture industry would be able to save heaps of water on their crops by only watering when the plants actually needed it.
Perhaps I was dreaming... - NeuralOverload, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Wait a second, if we start growing glowing vegtables, will the stores end up selling glowing food?
- shaneb06878, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Suuuure... a genetic mod... when their plants "glow" brown, it's time to water them.
- superfunkypants, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's really not all that interesting to see. But since everyone is bitching about it...
Here is a picture of a plant expressing GFP, which is what the plants in the article are doing:
http://www.clarechemical.com/gfp.htm
I'm pretty sure that the actual "glowing" plant from the article would be far less interesting. Hence, no picture. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Actually the plant can probably supply most of it's energy needs by photosynthesizing only with chlorophyll-a which absorbs light around 450nm well below the peak absorption of GFP which is near 500nm. The more interesting question not addressed by the short article is what gene or promoter the GFP was linked to. How did they get it to express only when the plant was under stress from dehydration?
- xocomil, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The article mentioned a possible use in farming. I know that father who has a potato farm in Idaho (yes, I grew up hearing jokes about that cliche) pays to have satellites take pictures of his fields using different light filters. Ultraviolet can show disease. Infrared can show which ones have gotten plenty of water, fertilizer, etc. Each of these photos can cost $250-$500 a piece depending on who he is paying at the time. With 20-30 fields to get pictures of, it can add up (each field is typically ~160 acres, but some are up to 320).
I know that if he could save money by purchasing a special light to see the fluorescence of his crops (even at night) he would do it. It would help by not wasting water and allow him to quickly see areas where sprinklers might be damaged and not putting out the same amount of water as other sprinklers.
I think that would be a great application for this modification. - Cyberdactyl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I use the old school technique of knowing when they need water. The plant looks sad and depressed (wilted)
- loker269, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3for some reason my first thought was when Homer Simpson grew tomacco and spread all that Uranium around on the field.....
- leodavinci, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Interesting, but would there actually be any commercial application for this? I could see it in a really cool garden, where at night all these plants start to glow, but other than that I don't think this has much of a future..
That's pretty sweet though, I wish I had a glowing plant : ). - osbjmg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Don't ever say "this day and age" unless you would like to risk sounding like a great uncle or something...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2:)
I have to agree with you, but you could plant some of the glowing plants in with whatever food crop you were growing and use them as an indicator of when the 'real' crop needed watering. - roguepirate, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Could have linked directly to article instead of own blog first.
- conigs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Still, I feel that copying info from Reuters and putting it in your blog, then throwing ads up is not exactly ethical.
Plus, the link in the write-up was changed now. Yay. - superfunkypants, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well said, Valinore. As far as getting the protein to express when starved, I just assumed it is something that the plant does naturally. In fact, chances are that the idea to develop this technology was no more than just a standard protein expression experiment.
Longman2g: As far as "special lighting conditions." That was a very simple way of saying that in order to see results you need to be able to differentiate the absorbance and excitation wavelengths of GFP. "Special optical sensors" probably refers to the type of technology that will be used by farmers.
Oh, and a leaf is just not a wad of chlorophyll. Not all light gets turned into energy. There is plenty of light to spare. - sfacets, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3You can only show them off by killing them. Ironic.
- fantasticFlan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I imagine they'd only use the glowing plants to figure out the best irrigation methods and then switch back to normal crops.
- arg553, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Pictures would be pointless. As stated in the article the glow is nearly impossible to detect with the naked eye. They have to use sensors to detect the light.
Didn't you guys read the article? - thewise1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Very cool, but the net result will probably be people starving their plant of water so they can see it, lol
It would be much cooler to make it glow when it doesn't need water IMHO - SanityDreams, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Okay, this is pretty interesting, and therefore dugg....
But has anyone else noticed that these people seem to be going crazy with the glowy green marker gene from jellyfish? I mean, they made glow in the dark pigs with the same thing....
Either way, kudos! We need more glowing things in this world. - DuMas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That was news back in 2000, and in the UK
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/12/18/glowing.potato.reut/index.html - ZarZax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2what an interesting idea.
- joeywood2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Could help cut back on over watering... I'd prolly kill the poor things, just wanting to see them glow.......
- drawkbox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Another trick is that plants are green when you water them properly ;)
- SuperGillies, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I would think its main use is to make it easier for people to keep their plants alive. Not to make them look pretty. If they wanted to do that they could just make it glow all the time.
- longman2g, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3so show a computer generated picture; almost all of the pictures we have of outer space are infrared, xray, or other invisble light to the human eye
- nstern2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2It says in the article that it's hard to see with the naked eye. You would need to be wearing an optical sensor while you are sleeping.
and you stole my icon! - thidranki, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3nobody actually clicks ads these days anymore anyways. especially not the digg folk. (most of them can't even see them, lol)
- astrotrain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1
They also will add another color of red which means:
"FEED ME... ITS SUPPA TIME!" - Tycho7, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2That's all fine and dandy, but the real question should be:
Does it taste good? - MOJIRA, on 05/17/2008, -1/+1they did? ...really? ...glow in the dark pigs?
- thidranki, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3good idea, but the article blows. No pictures, and its like 4 sentences long :P
- sensitiveplant, on 02/03/2009, -0/+0I am now grow a REAL Plant That MOVES when you Tickle It! The TickleMe Plant instantly closes its leaves and lowers its branches when Tickled! It even sleeps at night! I found it on line at http://www.ticklemeplant.com Now you can grow it indoors year round...See the video!
- longman2g, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Ah, but the plant gets its energy from the light, so if it is using some of that energy to fluoresce, it isn't using that energy to do other things. And they didn't say it needs special lighting conditions, it needs special optical sensors. It could very well be it needs special lighting conditions as well, the article just doesn't say that.
- sensitiveplant, on 02/03/2009, -0/+0I am growing a REAL plant that MOVES when you Tickle It! The leaves instantly close and even the branches droop when Tickled! Now you can grow a TickleMe Plant indoors year round! They even produce pretty pink flowers. You can google tickleme plant to get a greenhouse to grow it in
- ralphlauren06, on 05/28/2008, -0/+0radioactive plant taken from chernobyl
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