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Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

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Re: Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

#51

Post by chillacy »

roywiggins wrote: post #44
devindotcom wrote: post #36

The processes involved are orders of magnitude below the scale needed to produce usable light. And in the plants it's been tested in, it's also fatal after a short time. These aren't trivial problems, and they're not going to be solved by a designer photoshopping a concept.

Reminds me of a "design concept" for a little Nest-shaped box to stick on your window and magically cancel out all street noise. I'm pretty sure this is actually impossible, and is the equivalent of drawing a pegasus and saying "I have this great concept for a novel form of transportation!" i.e. more or less not worth anyone's time, since it's fantasy.

Possible in a controlled lab environment if you can destructively interfere the sound, but it's gonna depend on the sounds as well as knowing the location of the listener

Re: Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

#52

Post by DrJosiah »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #50
teekert wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, I once did the calculation, they use the protein luciferase, which requires 1 molecule of Lucferin and 1 molecule of ATP per photon produced! That means if you were to produce say 200 lm (about the output of a 40W incandescent light bulb) you'd need kilo's of ATP and Luciferin a week. Don't expect useful light.

Only kilos? Compared to bamboo that actually sounds feasible.

(warning: I am not a biologist)

The problem is that generating ATP requires sun or sugar in plants (depending on the specific metabolic process involved), and that the total amount of sugar produced during the day as part of photosynthesis is tiny relative to the amount of ATP necessary to fuel the light at night.

Consider that humans burn 100-150 kilos of ATP daily (according to Wikipedia). This is only possible because we are recycling ATP continuously, fueling the recycling process with sugar and oxygen that we consume at rates several orders of magnitude higher than what a 20 year old tree could produce in the same period.

I can't find numbers for peak sugar production in plants, but considering how many maple trees it takes to make a single small container of maple syrup, I think this is a reasonable statement to make for now. I will stand corrected if someone has good numbers. :)

Re: Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

#53

Post by codemonkeymike »

I heard on NPR they are trying to bring back the American Chestnut, which is being killed by a fungus from Asia. To be able to plant this genetically modified tree outside of test beds will take 5-10 years in just regulation issues alone. So even if they made this bioluminecent tree tomorrow (Which in itself is impossible) we wouldn't see these on the side of the rode for another 10+ years.

Re: Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

#54

Post by xkcd-sucks »

titanomachy wrote: post #48
Dylan16807 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article seems mostly seems worried about future projects. And I'm not sure what scientists you're talking about. Is it this line: > 116 organizations have called for a moratorium on any release of synthetic organisms. The UN convention on Biological Diversity has urged countries to exercise precaution in any release of synthetic organisms to the environment. Well if I click on the link I find a very interesting…

"Synthetic biology" in technical usage refers to custom sequences which are written on a computer then chemically assembled ex vivo . This is a widely used technique. It is distinct from the technique of extracting and amplifying a sequence from one organism and inserting it into another, although the results produced can be similar. Source: I work in a molecular biology lab.

So would PCRing a mutation into a gene be synthetic biology, or only if you wrote out the sequence on a computer before buying primers?

Re: Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

#55

Post by mkstowegnv »

logfromblammo wrote: post #42
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #21

Why not leave the night sky dark? It's like we have this 30,000 year old phobia that we can't ditch... there are no more tigers lurking in the darkness.

Even if there were, wouldn't a more elegant solution be to engineer glowing tigers? ...perhaps not.

William Blake would probably agree http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172943 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyger

Re: Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

#56

Post by roywiggins »

chillacy wrote: post #51
roywiggins wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a "design concept" for a little Nest-shaped box to stick on your window and magically cancel out all street noise. I'm pretty sure this is actually impossible, and is the equivalent of drawing a pegasus and saying "I have this great concept for a novel form of transportation!" i.e. more or less not worth anyone's time, since it's fantasy.

Possible in a controlled lab environment if you can destructively interfere the sound, but it's gonna depend on the sounds as well as knowing the location of the listener

Here it is, for reference. I could imagine it possible in the lab, and I'm not an audio engineer but the whole thing is completely implausible.

And sites like Gizmodo don't bring any critical thinking and just repeat the claims verbatim.

http://gizmodo.com/a-stick-on-speaker-that-uses-your-windows...

Re: Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

#57

Post by Dylan16807 »

DrJosiah wrote: post #52
Dylan16807 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only kilos? Compared to bamboo that actually sounds feasible.

(warning: I am not a biologist) The problem is that generating ATP requires sun or sugar in plants (depending on the specific metabolic process involved), and that the total amount of sugar produced during the day as part of photosynthesis is tiny relative to the amount of ATP necessary to fuel the light at night. Consider that humans burn 100-150 kilos of ATP daily (according to Wikipedia). This is only possible bec…

Well apparently a tree can permanently sequester "up to 48 pounds" of carbon per year (numbers are unclear, some mix up carbon and CO2, bamboo is more, but it makes a good ballpark max). Let's assume a tree that glows instead of growing for simplicity. 48 pounds, times 30/6 to get the number of ATP produced per carbon atom, times 507/12 to account for how much heavier ATP is than carbon, comes out to 12.6 kilograms of recycled ATP per day.

Re: Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

#58

Post by bduerst »

teekert wrote: post #37
devindotcom wrote: post #36

The processes involved are orders of magnitude below the scale needed to produce usable light. And in the plants it's been tested in, it's also fatal after a short time. These aren't trivial problems, and they're not going to be solved by a designer photoshopping a concept.

Exactly, I once did the calculation, they use the protein luciferase, which requires 1 molecule of Lucferin and 1 molecule of ATP per photon produced! That means if you were to produce say 200 lm (about the output of a 40W incandescent light bulb) you'd need kilo's of ATP and Luciferin a week. Don't expect useful light.

Well, 1 kg of ATP is about 2 moles, and since this is ATP->AMP (10.9 kcal/mol) that's about 21.8 kcal, ignoring other upkeep.

Basically 1kg ATP is 21.8 kilocalories

Re: Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

#59

Post by vacri »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #21

Why not leave the night sky dark? It's like we have this 30,000 year old phobia that we can't ditch... there are no more tigers lurking in the darkness.

Because we light our cities to help us move around, not from some fear of predators.

Re: Bioluminescent trees as an alternative to electric lighting

#60

Post by fineline »

jszymborski wrote: post #41

There are a lot of problems with this that have been outlined in all these comments, and 99% are true. I would instead take advantages of photoautrophic organisms that already are bioluminescent like Dinoflagellate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinoflagellate They can have a startling effect in large numbers and feed themselves with daylight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence#mediaviewer/Fi... Some video…

I saw this effect off the beach near me a few weeks ago, it was quite captivating as the breakers were lit up as if by an underwater neon (I actually thought it was an artificial light show of some kind at first). But although deeply impressive, it certainly wouldn't have had a meaningful effect on visibility of the neighbouring land. Moonlight is much more effective.
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