Roads of thefuture could be lit by glowing trees instead of streetlamps, thanks to abreakthrough in creating bioluminescent plants.
Experts injected specializednanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant, which caused it to giveoff a dim light for nearly four hours. This could solve lots of problems.
The chemicalinvolved, which produced enough light to read a book by, is the same as is usedby fireflies to create their characteristic shine. To create their glowingplants, engineers from the Mᴀssachusetts Insтιтute of Technology (MIT) turnedto an enzyme called luciferase. Luciferase acts on a molecule called luciferin,causing it to emit light.
Roads of thefuture could be lit by glowing trees instead of streetlamps, thanks to abreakthrough in creating bioluminescent plants. Experts created a watercressplant which caused it to glow for nearly four hours and gave off enough lightto illuminate this book
Anothermolecule called Co-enzyme A helps the process along by removing a reactionbyproduct that can inhibit luciferase activity. The MIT team packaged each ofthese components into a different type of nanoparticle carrier.
Thenanoparticles help them to get to the right part of the plant and also preventthem from building to concentrations that could be toxic to the plants. Theresult was a watercress plant that functioned like a desk lamp.
Researchersbelieve with further tweaking, the technology could also be used to providelights bright enough to illuminate a workspace or even an entire street, aswell as low-intensity indoor lighting.
MichaelStrano, professor of chemical engineering at MIT and the senior author of thestudy, said: ‘The vision is to make a plant that will function as a desk lamp —a lamp that you don’t have to plug in. The light is ultimately powered by theenergy metabolism of the plant itself. Our work very seriously opens up thedoorway to streetlamps that are nothing but treated trees, and to indirectlighting around homes.’
Luciferasesmake up a class of oxidative enzymes found in several species that enable themto ‘bioluminesce’, or emit light. Fireflies are able to emit light via a chemical reaction.
In the chemicalreaction luciferin is converted to oxyluciferin by the luciferase enzyme. Some of the energy released by this reactionis in the form of light. The reaction is highly efficient, meaning nearly allthe energy put into the reaction is rapidly converted to light.
Lightingaccounts for around 20 per cent of worldwide energy consumption, so replacingthem with naturally bioluminescent plants would represent a significant cut toCO2 emissions. The researchers’ early efforts at the start of the projectyielded plants that could glow for about 45 minutes, which they have sinceimproved to 3.5 hours.
The lightgenerated by one ten centimetre (four inch) watercress seedling is currentlyabout one-thousandth of the amount needed to properly read by, but it wasenough to illuminate the words on a page of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
The MIT teambelieves it can boost the light emitted, as well as the duration of light, byfurther optimizing the concentration and release rates of the chemicalcomponents. For future versions of thistechnology, the team hopes to develop a way to paint or spray the nanoparticlesonto plant leaves, which could make it possible to transform trees and otherlarge plants into light sources.
Theresearchers have also demonstrated that they can turn the light off by addingnanoparticles carrying a luciferase inhibitor. This could enable them to eventually create plants that shut off theirlight emission in response to environmental conditions such as sunlight, theysay.
The fullfindings of the study were published in the American Chemical Society journalNano Letters. What do you think about this development?
Let us knowin the comments.
Reference(s): MIT.EDU
