[JDLongley]

Its highly unlikely that these plants would ever succeed as an invasive species because the energy consumption required to glow puts the plant at a massive disadvantage. I ordered something similar from a kickstarter a few months ago:

http://www.glowingplant.com/

They say that within a couple generations, the glowing feature quickly disappears due to natural selection.

[lentil_soup]

Actually quite a few scientists tried to stop that kickstarter because of the dangers it could prove to the ecosystem:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2013/jun/0...

[Dylan16807]

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 sentence:

> With synthetic biology, instead of swapping existing genes from one species to another (as in “ traditional” genetic engineering), scientists can write entirely new genetic code on a computer, "print" it out and then insert it into living organisms — or even try to create life from scratch.

Swapping a couple genes from one species to another sounds exactly like what they typically do to make a species glow.

And yet after that sentence they seem to change their definition of synthetic biology to include both those categories.

It tastes like doublespeak to me. "Companies are doing not just X but Y! Ban Y! (also we defined Y to include X)"

[titanomachy]

"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.

[Dylan16807]

So let's say there's a gene that might be useful to me. I have a listing of base pairs, but it would be very expensive to extract DNA/RNA from actual specimens. I chemically assemble an exact recreation and inject it. Is this synthetic biology?

[titanomachy]

Yep! Although the result might be the same, the technique used is synthetic biology. Usually the synthetic route is more expensive but a lot simpler.

[xkcd-sucks]

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?

[fluidcruft]

I think that statement is a response to Venter's synthetic bacteria.

[duaneb]

They didn't really outline what dangers exactly it could prove to the ecosystem.... I'm sure there are some, but it's hardly obvious. It's not like the gene will stick around without human effort.

[TheGrassyKnoll]

> They didn't really outline what dangers...

Anyone who's had to muck with a giant piece of spaghetti code realizes how dicey it is to start changing things you don't really understand.

Projects like this and maybe tens of thousands of others in the future could interact to create strange changes in the wild that no one would be able to completely explain.

Maybe I'm just too much of a Luddite, or just an idiot (OK, I'm a complete fucking idiot), but projects like this and the thousands that are sure to follow give me an impending sense of doom.

[CamperBob2]

Organisms aren't computer programs. The point raised earlier about the added energy drain being a handicap to natural selection is spot-on.