DIY biotechnology: Glowing trees

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Antony Evans, left, and Kyle Taylor show E. coli with jellyfish genes (Credit: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times).

The following is an edited excerpt of a longer story. Find a link to the full story below.

Hoping to give new meaning to the term “natural light,” a small group of biotechnology hobbyists and entrepreneurs has started a project to develop plants that glow, potentially leading the way for trees that can replace electric streetlamps and potted flowers luminous enough to read by.

Rather than being the work of a corporation or an academic laboratory, this project is being planned by a small group of hobbyist scientists in one of the growing number of communal laboratories springing up around the nation as biotechnology becomes cheap enough to give rise to a do-it-yourself movement.The project is also being financed in a D.I.Y. sort of way: It has attracted more than $250,000 in pledges from about 4,500 donors in about two weeks on the Web site Kickstarter.

View the full story here: A Dream of Trees Aglow at Night

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