this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2025

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Houseplants

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139

I got my firefly petunias from light.bio around a month or so ago and they're now just starting to take off. This picture was taken in a dark room with no windows, though I'm sure the phone brightened (cdn.masto.host)

submitted 1 month ago by cliftonmr@en.osm.town to c/houseplants@mander.xyz

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

@houseplants

#plants #flowers

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[–] movies@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I got some Spring of last year! I have ‘em outside. Not terribly impressive but a fun novelty.

[–] cliftonmr@en.osm.town 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@movies Aye! I agree. It would be cool if one day they could make them maybe 10 times as bright with other color options. Yours lasted through the winter? That is nice to hear.

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz -1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

It's not a light bulb lol. If it were ten times as bright the plant would exhaust it's own energy and die

[–] cliftonmr@en.osm.town 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

@Doxatek lol. This picture oversells how bright they are. A guesstimate on my part would be a 10x increase would bring it up to the level of a glow in the dark sticker.

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz 1 points 4 weeks ago

That's true. Fluorescence is just metabolically expensive.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 6 points 1 month ago

I'm glad these are still being sold. I first read about them last year, but was moving at the time. I'd really like to get some.

[–] Wutchilli@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago

I wish they would ship to europe, i allways wanted one of those.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

God, I want some of these so bad. They are so fun. I gotta sort the plants I have still haha.

[–] zod000@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

I got my wife some of those last year. I wish they had lasted longer, but we couldn't find a balance of sunlight that they liked. And yeah, they not all that bright, but still super cool.

[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Those look damn cool. I'm not really a plant person, but I'd be sure to try to change if I could get some of those. Doesn't look like they ship to Europe though.

[–] Lommy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I'm afraid no reputable seller does, the EU has a ban on gene-edited organisms like plants and fish. Understandable but i'd sure would have liked to have a tank filled with Glofish

[–] FrostyTrichs@crazypeople.online 2 points 1 month ago

This is so cool. Thank you for sharing!

[+] grober_Unfug@discuss.tchncs.de -4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

[deleted]

[–] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

depends on your definition of genetically modified. you'd be hard pressed to find any plant that hasn't been selectively bred, spliced and adapted by humans.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz -4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

That's a disingenuous argument. You can't selectively breed an completely foreign gene into an organism. I can't believe this even has to be said, but I guess the GMO lobby gets to people more than I thought.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes you can, it just takes a lot more effort to get the right random mutation.

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Good luck breeding a plant until it replicates jellyfish DNA for fluorescence.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

https://phys.org/news/2025-06-fish-biofluorescence-evolved-million-years.html

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I mean yeah if you can cause a specific selective pressure for the fluorescence trait and then breed the plant for 100 million years I guess you have a shot haha

Those fish are definitely badass though

It's crazy how even though the process will take that long theoretically I can make this gene insertion in a single day with modern transformation and gene editing tools

[–] knightly@pawb.social 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

You can shave off most of that 100 million years using variation breeding. No need to wait around for random chance to happen or to fiddle with genes manually when a little radiation can trigger as many mutations as we want.

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

It's still random chance. But you are of course right that you would get them faster than possible in what's typically considered natural.

No one really does this anymore though. Of course you can't select the radiation induced mutation or where or how many or how large or what you want it to do. Most give nothing useful whatsoever if they aren't just outright killed by the mutation.

You just would have to do literally billions of them and see if you can observe any type of desirable phenotype because there's no realistic way to do sequencing on that many.

Many traits are not regulated by single genes but on long pathways involving multi gene networks. These are complex and make it even more unlikely to obtain in any reasonable amount of time adding another layer of complexity

If you want a plant to glow and all you're doing hypothetically is irradiating them I think it would take much longer than you may initially expect.

Thank you for the enjoyable discussion by the way :)

[–] knightly@pawb.social 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Likewise! I know the idea isn't practical, I just love all the weirdness that comes with taking something that's only technically feasible and pushing that thought to extremes. XD

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago

Hey, if you had funding you could totally go for it. I'm only familiar with likelihood of rare plant events because I'm always trying to get them in vain. Several years now with gene editing tools haha

[–] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

No one lobbied me lol. They cross bred a petunia with a mushroom. It's roughly the same concept as when humans bred maize.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

No they didn't crossbred it. Fungi and plants are so far apart in the tree of life that suggesting this is ludicrous. You can't get a fungal spore and place it in a petunia's flower and get a hybrid.

DNA manipulation in a lab and selective breeding are fundamentally different. It's silly to try to compare both.

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz 2 points 4 weeks ago

Not really. They transformed plant cells in a lab with GFP from a mushroom and established a stable transgenic line. This can't be done without modern techniques. Not the same as breeding them

[–] artifex@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think it’s a fair concern in general but fine in this case since the company almost certainly edited in the lux operon which is one of the most well studied and understood gene switches out there. It and similar pathways have been used in many branches of science for decades. I think the novelty here is just that it’s in a consumer product instead.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

According to the website, they can't reproduce by seed, only by division.

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

In each seed this gene would segregate some wouldn't express at all, some lower and if you did it more times more than likely the mutation would be lost

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Is that still the case with gene splicing vs natural mutation?

[–] Doxatek@mander.xyz 2 points 4 weeks ago

If the trait or edit is homozygous and you self pollinate the plant the trait will not be segregated out. If it is heterozygous you will get a mix.

When transforming plants you can get hetero or homozygous edits both. I am unsure the genotype of the firefly petunias though.

So if the edit is homozygous it is known as a pure line.

[–] j4yt33@feddit.org 1 points 1 month ago

I think the concern is more about cross-pollination, not seeds from the plant directly

[–] Anarki_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 month ago

You don't need to plant them outside
Above
Don't eat them