By the light of the silvery oak tree?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827885.000-glowing-trees-could-light-up-city-streets.html

Glowing trees could light up city streets

25 November 2010 by Frank Swain
Magazine issue 2788. Subscribe and save
IMAGINE taking a midnight stroll, your route lit by row upon row of trees glowing a ghostly blue. If work by a team of undergraduates at the University of Cambridge pans out, bioluminescent trees could one day be giving our streets this dreamlike look. The students have taken the first step on this road by developing genetic tools that allow bioluminescence traits to be easily transferred into an organism.

Nature is full of glow-in-the-dark critters, but their shine is feeble - far too weak to read by, for example. To boost this light, the team, who were participating in the annual International Genetically Engineered Machines competition (iGEM), modified genetic material from fireflies and the luminescent marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri to boost the production and activity of light-yielding enzymes. They then made further modifications to create genetic components or "BioBricks" that can be inserted into a genome.

The team managed to produce a range of colours by putting these genes into the Escherichia coli bacterium. They found that a volume of bacterial culture about the size of a regular wine bottle gave off enough light to read by.

[Ozymanithrax]

1. Genetically modified Trees?

I think this is a great idea, but the GM food critics will be apoplectic.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. No one seemed mind the fauna in Avatar..... I didn't. n/t

[Celtic Raven]

3. Make this blue planet

even bluer if they succeed with this.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. It's Tolkien's Telperion!

http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/t/telperion.html