Could Glowing Trees One Day Light Our Streets?

"Hoping to give new meaning to the term 'natural light,' a small group of biotechnology hobbyists and entrepreneurs has started a project to develop plants that glow, potentially leading the way for trees that can replace electric streetlamps and potted flowers luminous enough to read by," reports Andrew Pollack.

"We hope to have a plant which you can visibly see in the dark (like glow-in-the-dark paint), but don’t expect to replace your light bulbs with version 1.0," the project’s Kickstarter page says.

"But part of the goal is more controversial: to publicize do-it-yourself synthetic biology and to 'inspire others to create new living things,'" says Pollack. "As promising as that might seem to some, critics are alarmed at the idea of tinkerers creating living things in their garages. They fear that malicious organisms may be created, either intentionally or by accident."

"Two environmental organizations, Friends of the Earth and the ETC Group, have written to Kickstarter and to the Agriculture Department, which regulates genetically modified crops, in an effort to shut down the glowing plant effort."