Glowing Plants Engineered With Firefly Protein Could Be Your Next Desk Lamp

What if you could read a book by the glowing light of a plant? Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are making that a reality. Specialized nanoparticles embedded into the leaves of a watercress plant cause a dim light to glow from the plant for nearly four hours. The light from one 4-inch watercress seedling is about one-thousandth the amount needed to read by, but further optimization can improve how much light is emitted and for how long. Eventually, the plant could function as a desk lamp which you don’t have to plug in, according to chemical engineering professor at MIT and senior paper author Michael Strano.