Re: [DIYbio] is BioGlow being realistic?

In Forma we've started growing P.stypticus, the most famous
bioluminescent fungus. In contrast to a plant, a fungus can be easily
fed exogenous sugars or other carbon sources, which lets you concentrate
the energy needed to make bright glowing light.

There's a reason that plants are the only biological group that never
bioluminesces; they're at the bottom of the trophic pile, they can't
afford to waste energy like that. Whereas anything at a higher trophic
level can allocate energy during times of abundance to things like
"glowing".

Insects are most spectacular, glow-bugs and the like. Proportionally,
where light-adapted eyes are assumed, benthic fish are pretty awesome,
too. But on land, for continuous glowing output, fungi are probably the
best bet. We're going to play with P.stypticus for a while and try to
get it glowing efficiently, feeding it cellulose for a long run of
glowing output and spraying with lactose (according to research it can
utilise this very efficiently for glowing, but not at all for growing..)
to get burst output for events or show-cases.

And if we later get into directed evolution or mutagenesis to try and
make it glow even brighter... :)

The downside; Fungal bioluminescence does not have a clear-cut
luciferase, rather the luciferin appears to react with the products of
extracellular metabolites. So, it's not a very transferable system to
other species.

On 16/10/14 20:38, David Wilson wrote:
> Well I'm not a biohacker, it would be interesting to be but it's only a
> fantasy for me. From a marketing standpoint though, the amount of light
> produced is entirely inefficient. It might be enough if they got a whole
> lot of them and set them in a row, window on one side, glass on inside
> on the other, with the plants set up in between with a hydroponic system
> of sorts. It'd be pretty and that's half the battle. There's no way they
> could sell it as a streetlight at this point, maybe if you can get it
> brighter and in vine form guys. That would be a beautiful mix of
> concrete and plants though, huge vines of glow in the dark plants over
> the walls... You'd just have to make sure it won't grow horizontally or
> the maintenance cost would dismiss it. For all that matters, you could
> sell it to individual businesses to place it over their storefronts,
> it'd require daily maintenance but would be a statement to their "green"
> interest, and that would be the point you'd sell it on. If they can make
> something that forces the plant to stop growing at a certain length or
> at a certain type of barrier, some kind of emission or light at the
> bottom of where you want it to stop growing or something I couldn't
> think of. Feel free to use my idea, no credit of any form necessary,
> though it would be nice. :)
>
> On Wednesday, September 3, 2014 8:50:40 PM UTC-5, Nathan McCorkle wrote:
>
>     Does you post title refer to that quoted text? Or are you citing quote
>     to reinforce that it doesn't seem realistic? I actually thought you
>     were quoting someone at BioGlow, but from googling it seems the author
>     is just some tech media writer:
>     http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/why-your-streetlights-wont-be-replaced-by-glowing-trees-anytime-soon/
>     <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Fscience%2F2013%2F04%2Fwhy-your-streetlights-wont-be-replaced-by-glowing-trees-anytime-soon%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGjzcejxdqXMIlvj1kYdFIO8rWdjg>
>
>
>     His analysis seems decent, he notes inefficiencies know and the math
>     is simple enough.
>
>     Certainly with enhancement a few of the points he makes could be
>     moot... namely the omni-directional character of the light emission
>     seems like something that could be improved upon, first by moving
>     expression to some cells on the lower part of the leaves (stomata
>     maybe), then by controlling the direction the emission complex points
>     toward. That can all be done in parallel with biochemistry tweaks for
>     the metabolics.
>
>     He also doesn't really go into the 'one-time' costs like enzymes
>     (these won't actually be one-time costs, but they certainly aren't
>     quite recurring costs in the same way as the small-molecule energy
>     transporter is), but somehow determines that only 5% of the energy
>     involved in luminescense will be photon output, that seems quite low
>     to me for a system that is based on catalysts (but I really don't
>     know).
>
>     If you assume the machinery is a fixed non-recurring cost, and the
>     pathway is 15 metabolic steps long (I don't know how many steps it
>     actually is from common plant molecules), and the assumption is 5%
>     energy making it to photons, you get an average thermodynamic
>     efficiency per-metabolic-step of 81%.
>
>     I don't honestly know if that is realistic or not. I tried searching
>     for info on heat/thermal production/waste, or enzyme energy savings,
>     but I think my search terms were lacking in specificity, as I was
>     getting more hits enzyme efficiency as related to the speed or
>     completeness of reaction, rather than % energy to heat. I can't
>     remember if I want to search for something about Gibbs free energy or
>     something... I have been bad about memorizing chemistry.
>
>
>     --
>     -Nathan
>
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