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"I'm walking today in Tel Aviv along a boulevard, and there are huge trees around me, and I'm thinking how beautiful it would be at night if they were faintly glowing."

Synthetic biologist Omri Amirav-Drory's musings about a world where we grow our light resources, might not be all that distant.


He is one of three members of a Kickstarter project that promises to grow glowing plants in a DIY biohacking effort that has this week seen its target smashed.

At the time of writing 4,757 backers had pledged a total of $272,698 (£175,000) with 29 days to go. The initial target was just $65,000.

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The project, which has the support of genetics professor George Church (he of the Neanderthal cloning controversy), appears to have captured the public's imagination -- and that's the whole point. "What we're trying to do is inspire and educate people about what's possible today," says Amirav-Drory, who is also CEO and founder of Genome Compiler, software that helps users design and debug DNA. It's key to the project, which uses luciferase -- an enzyme that makes fireflies and some fungi and bacteria glow that has already been used to make tobacco plants glow -- to modify the DNA sequence of Arabidopsis, a small plant. That new section of DNA will be printed at Cambrian Genomics and transferred to the plant in a community lab (a process reserved for the prototype stage). "To be honest," says Amirav-Drory, "it's actually annoying that I have to do it. I wish that other people would do it -- I wish that 100,000 people would use my software to to solve another 100,000 problems in the world. Sometimes you have to show what can be done and part of the thing we want to show is it's so cheap you can crowdfund it. You don't have to be in industry or academia."

And the project's roots were certainly not solely based in academia. It came about when the biologist met Antony Evans at Singularity University last summer. Evans has a background in mathematics and cofounded a mobile microfinance bank in the Philippines. He'd watched a Google X talk Amirav-Drory had given on using synthetic biology to create a more sustainable world, and one thing stuck -- his anecdote about future glowing plants. He, Evans and plant biologist Kyle Taylor soon after got together and the Kickstarter project was born. "We chose Kickstarter for a reason -- we're trying to sell a story more than anything. Someone who doesn't know about biology but is excited about this field and wants to solve a problem, can.


You find the right people, crowdsource the genetic design, crowdfund the project and go to a community lab and do something that people on the street would consider science fiction. This is part of the story that we are trying to tell."

We need this kind of technology to move to a world that's more sustainable

The project has got a lot of attention, but it's also had its fair share of flack from people that Amirav-Drory says simply aren't taking the time to understand what it is they're doing.

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Friends of the Earth US and Action on Erosion, Technology and Concentration wrote to Genome Compiler to call for the Kickstarter project to be pulled, saying it would lead to "widespread, random and uncontrolled release of bioengineered seeds", which "poses real world risks to the environment". As part of the project, those that fund will indeed be sent seeds (by next May at the earliest), but the Arabidopsis plant was chosen specifically because it carries a low risk of spreading even in the wild. The plants or seeds will not be commercially sold thereafter.


Fear, says Amirav-Drory, should not be holding us back from pushing the boundaries of what synthetic biology can do. He points to Amyris' breakthrough this year when biologists used the technology to engineer common yeast to produce a key molecule used in malaria drugs. "They're going to save millions of people," says Amirav-Drory. "We can solve big challenges, so many problems. We need this kind of technology to move to a world that's more sustainable. I wish that Friends Of The Earth would actually spend the time to learn about the science. They sent us a detailed document saying its legal but it's a loop hole and even the UN says to be careful. We think that's important, but people have this feeling that if absolutely everyone has not told you can do it, you can't do it.

We're three people trying to do the right thing, and not everything has to be totally regulated like that. "It's so obviously beautiful, and non-dangerous and legal and ethical. I think it's the right project to start with. If people can't do it in one country they'll just go to another, like with stem cells. Or it will go underground, because the underlying technology is getting cheaper and cheaper. DNA sequencing is getter better and faster, faster than Moore's law. Computers double efficiency every two years and this is happening much faster than that."

At some point, he says, you've got to get out of the lab and start testing the waters in the real world. Opening up like this in a populist way, he says, will get kids thinking biology might actually be cool and stop people from being afraid of genetic engineering. "They'll say 'oh cool, I have it, it's inside my computer -- I want to hack it myself'. I want people to get excited and stop trying to be lawyers or even computer scientists, making another social mobile app. We solve problems with biology and I wish more people knew about that."

Everything will be published online as the project progresses, and by surpassing their target the team is hopeful it will progress quickly. For now that means trialling more sequences faster -- the plants have a three-month cycle so the team will have the opportunity to quickly tweak the sequence as they go along. The aim is to keep going until they get the brightest light possible, then the method will be transferred to other plants or even trees.

According to Amirav-Drory, entrepreneur Tony Hsieh who is trying to


kickstart the start-up scene in Las Vegas, wants him to engineer a glowing cactus.

Amirav-Drory is hopeful they will reach their goal of one day building boulevards lined with glowing trees. He hopes, then, environmentalists will look at things differently -- "if somebody were to cut the tree and see it glowing inside, it would be more visceral and people would be more careful not to do it."

There's only one problem slowing our progress: "The main problem with trees is, they take so damn long to grow."