Speaker 0:  forget the energy crisis and the glare of streetlights. what if the solution to lighting our cities were actually alive? the chinese biotech just cracked the code on glowing plants that are a 100 times brighter than anything we've seen, and it's turning our avatar fantasies into a trillion dollar urban reality. so urban lighting might be going full biological. and i've been hearing these stories for years, but now it might be a reality considering these are a 100 times brighter than anything that we're able to produce before. magic pen bio has successfully gene edited over 20 plant species using firefly and fungal dna to create self sustaining glow in the dark flora. these aren't just novelties. they're high iteration biological machines designed to replace ambient municipal lighting. this marks a pivot from tech that mimics nature to that is tech that mimics nature to tech that is nature. sorry. it takes a while to get your head around that. potentially slashing urban electricity grids' carbon footprints while creating living smart cities. what do you think about this, john?

Speaker 1:  i think this is cool, because we've all we keep talking about light pollution and all that sort of stuff. so the breakthrough is, as you talked about, it lies in bioluminescence engineering, which is the process of enabling organisms to produce light through chemical reactions. so think like fireflies. right? so in this case, scientists introduced genes from fireflies and luminous fungi into plant cells, which allows them to emit visible light continuously. and so, they've already engineered more than 20 plant species including common ornamental plants like orchids, sunflowers, and chrysanthemums, which is kinda cool. and it's significant because it demonstrates that the technology is not limited to a single plant type. it can be generalized across species. so we could have a whole forest lit up at night, which is super cool, i think. so, obviously, i don't know how much light it does emit, but we're seeing a shift towards systems that are more self sustaining, environmentally integrated, low maintenance, and these glowing plants are an example of a bio integrated infrastructure where nature can replace traditional hardware. i'm excited about this. what do you think about this? are you excited?

Speaker 0:  i'm excited about this. i've been hearing about stuff like this for a while now. sorry if you could hear that. i'm trying to share this tab instead. there we go. trying to share this tab instead with showing the light plants. anyway, i'm excited about this because it's super cool. and i think, you know, moving this to more of a natural lighting instead of street lights and walking paths and even lights in your back garden, you know, that just light up where you're walking. think of the infrastructure that we don't necessarily need, you know, and the construction that doesn't need to be dug up. and now not only that, but the things that light your trees are, you know, taking the carbon out of the air and giving us fresh oxygen and doing all these good things for us. so i'm really excited about it now. this was showcased in april, this month, for the night gardens program, and it's rolling out now. while specialized initial, petunia level consumer versions like lightbio retail for around 30 to $50, large scale municipal costs are to be determined but involve zero electricity overhead. so i like to think of this update like transitioning from old school kerosene lamps to led bulbs, but the bulb is a sunflower. instead of plugging into a wall, these plants are plugged into the earth, charging themselves with water and nutrients during the day so they can broadcast a soft natural wi fi signal of light all night long. so yeah. works in any soil rich environment currently, includes orchids, sunflowers, and lilies. imagine walking your dog in a park. that's naturally illuminated by hedges and flowers rather than harsh, buzzing orange street lamps. there's no indication that any of these things would survive a harsh winter in canada, so we're probably out of luck for this being, our primary access to street lighting, but we might have it, in parks and whatnot. what do you think, john?

Speaker 1:  i'm excited for this. there's a few hidden risks and constraints. so there's obviously genetic modification concerns that people are gonna raise. there's the ecological impacts of gene spreading. there's the maintenance unpredictability, and there's the light consistency in lifespan. so i think what this means is that adoption is likely going to be regulated and gradual and not immediate. do you agree with that, or what are your thoughts? do you think this could just roll like wildfire?

Speaker 0:  well, the one thing that caught me when doing the research is, you know, tourism and the nighttime economy. so yeah. i think it'll grow slowly from a city, by city or an infrastructure perspective, but i definitely see nightclubs, village. you walk down the village square where there's a few pubs or things open, and it's naturally lit at night for these because they would invest in these kinds of things as a little community to make it a niche thing. you could see this, as a thing at the royal botanical gardens. they've even, lining plants along their walkway to light it up naturally just because that's the type of thing it is. so i could see this growing faster at the consumer level than at the municipal level, for many reasons.

Speaker 1:  yeah. yeah. for sure. yeah. maybe it's it's, it flies under the radar, and it's an underground scene first and then takes off from there. but, i like this because we're seeing biology used to produce materials, store energy, and now even generate light. and it's expanding what biology can do beyond traditional agriculture or medicine. so i think this is great.

Speaker 0:  so this uses crispr may mediated gene insertion to incorporate the luciferase enzyme. pardon?

Speaker 1:  our favorite, crispr. yeah.

Speaker 0:  crispr. yeah. from fireflies and, caffeic acid cycle from bioluminescent fungi. unlike nanoparticle coatings, light is a metabolic byproduct of the plant's own internal chemistry. so this is a model t moment for synthetic biology. we are moving from simple genetic modification for food to biological infrastructure for infrastructure. so re i'm really wondering where this is gonna go. you talked about ecological escape, so i think we've talked about the, downside of this. but if you're a hobbyist or if you're a bar looking for a unique hook to get people in, you might wanna look at this. we are witnessing the birth of the biological century where the line between a park and a power plant completely disappears. would you feel safer walking through a park lit by glowing trees, or does the idea of engineered nature feel a bit too much like sci fi dystopia? let us know in the chat.