Turn off the lights: Glow-in-the-dark houseplants are on the way

This is really cool: A team of scientists based in California are looking to engineer a new generation of bioluminescent plants by tinkering with their genetic makeup. And they've already smashed their funding goal on Kickstarter.

The kooky experiment is about more than making something neat to show your friends. As Andrew Pollack at The New York Times notes, the research could pave the way for "trees that can replace electric streetlamps" or even "potted flowers luminous enough to read by."

"We are using Synthetic Biology techniques and Genome Compiler's software to insert bioluminescence genes into Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant and member of the mustard family, to make a plant that visibly glows in the dark (it is inedible)," write the project's creators:

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As of this writing, the project has more than 4,700 backers whose donations have more than quadrupled the team's initial funding goal of $65,000. Pledges who donate $150 or more will even receive a batch of seeds for their own faintly lit plant. But as with all ambitious Kickstarters, says Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow, "you should be prepared to lose your dough." The scientists warn donors that this experiment is merely the first of many steps.

Still, it's a noble idea. Plants are clean, cheap, easy to dispose of, and don't require an external power source. Plus, they'd do away with a lot of the ecological unfriendliness we don't think much about, like batteries.

Synthetic biology aimed to make organisms glow is hardly new though — the research field actually stretches back to the '80s and includes the sequencing of firefly DNA. In fact, scientists have already modified the DNA of animals ranging from sheep to cats to make them uncharacteristically luminous. Perhaps the best part, though, is that unlike a genetically retouched kitty, a glow-in-the-dark fern won't wander away when you're trying to read.