Glowing plants could one day replace street lamps by using bioluminescence to light public spaces. It sounds like the basis for a science fiction novel, but it’s much closer to reality after a successful Kickstarter fundraising drive by three California scientists.
The glowing plant project has already raked in $484,013 from 8,433 backers on the crowdsourcing website Kickstarter. But the project has drawn condemnation from some groups who claim the unregulated technology, like genetically modified organisms, has not been properly studied and could actually be harmful for the environment and human health.
“Inspired by fireflies and aquatic bioluminescence, our team of Stanford-trained Ph.D.s, Kyle Taylor and Omri Amirav-Drory, are using off-the-shelf methods to create real glowing plants in a do-it-yourself bio-lab in California,” says project manager Anthony Evans in a video promoting the project.
The group had already designed the DNA but needed funding to synthesize and transform it into a real glowing plant. In exchange for a donation of at least $40, donors will be sent glowing plant seeds, allowing them to own a piece of the project and their very own glowing plant. Thousands of people across the U.S. are expected to receive glowing plant seeds once the project is complete.
It all sounds innocuous enough, but people within the environmental and food advocacy communities believe that sending glowing plant seeds to investors is dangerous given the limited research and regulations.
The seeds are produced through “synthetic biology” technology, which blogger Jack Adam Weber calls “GMO on steroids.”
“It is more dangerous than GMO and is so new it is not even regulated,” he writes.
“To date, almost 5,000 backers have stumped up the cash for seeds, which means up to 500,000 engineered synthetic biology seeds may be posted randomly to all corners of the U.S.A. This amounts to a nationwide unmonitored release of these novel glowing organisms,” writes L. Jim Thomas, a writer and researcher for ETC Group, an environmental organization.
“And here’s the kicker in the Kickstarter: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said that it does not need to assess, regulate, or monitor those glowtesque organisms. This is because they have elected to use a genetic engineering technique falling outside of government regulation.”
Unlike GMO foods, which use some naturally sourced DNA sequences, synthetic biology crafts a DNA sequence on a computer and then grafts it into a seed.
“It’s unclear how to asses the real world-impact of those sequences on both the organism and its ecological context. To date there has yet to be any deliberate environmental release of an avowedly ‘synthetic biology’ organism,” writes Thomas.
Last year, 111 organizations called for a moratorium on synthetic biology, as did several countries at meetings of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The coalition has called for greater study of the potential consequences of synthetic biology, as well as democratic governance of the industry.
“The risks of releasing synthetic organisms into the environment — intentionally or unintentionally — have barely begun to be defined, and the urgently needed ethical, legal and regulatory oversight mechanisms remain undeveloped,” write the authors of the The Principles for the Oversight of Synthetic Biology.
“Without proper safeguards, we risk letting synthetic organisms and their products out of the laboratory with unknown potential to disrupt ecosystems, threaten human health and undermine social, economic and cultural rights.”