A Beijing-area biotechnology firm says it has used gene-editing techniques to engineer more than twenty plant species that emit a visible glow after dark, without drawing on any external power source. The development, demonstrated recently in Beijing, has revived a decades-old idea — bioluminescent vegetation as a low-carbon substitute for street lighting — though independent scientists caution that the technology remains some distance from practical illumination.
At the Zhongguancun Forum, an annual technology showcase held in Beijing, a biotechnology company called Magicpen Bio exhibited a collection of orchids, sunflowers and chrysanthemums that glowed faintly green in a darkened enclosure, with no batteries or cabling in sight. The company, based in Hefei in Anhui province and founded by Li Renhan, an alumnus of China Agricultural University, says it has genetically modified more than twenty ornamental species to glow continuously after sunset. Mr. Li has spoken of eventually using such plants to illuminate parks, walkways and public squares using only water and fertiliser, doing away with grid electricity altogether.
How does a plant glow without electricity?
The mechanism draws on a pathway found in nature rather than any synthetic light source. The earliest bioluminescent plant, a tobacco specimen modified in the late 1980s, used the firefly enzyme luciferase, but required regular spraying with an external chemical fuel to sustain its glow — a constraint that confined it to laboratory settings. The approach now used in most self-sustaining glowing plants instead relies on a set of genes drawn from bioluminescent fungi of the genus Neonothopanus, which light up decaying wood in tropical forests by continuously recycling caffeic acid, a compound that plants already produce as a precursor of lignin in their cell walls. Because the host plant supplies its own fuel, this pathway allows an engineered plant to glow throughout its life cycle without any external intervention — a feature that has made it the basis of most commercial efforts in this space.
Proponents argue that autoluminescent plants could, in principle, supplement conventional lighting in public spaces while consuming no electricity and emitting no carbon. Mr. Li has framed the technology’s appeal in terms of tourism and what he describes as the “nighttime economy”, drawing a comparison with the luminous forests depicted in the film “Avatar”. Beyond aesthetics, the pitch is one of sustainability: a streetlight-free park, lit by vegetation that needs nothing more than the inputs any garden already requires.
Not entirely. The same fungal pathway underpins the “Firefly Petunia”, a single glowing houseplant variety developed by the American company Light Bio, which received clearance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in late 2023 and has been sold to home gardeners since 2024. What distinguishes Magicpen Bio’s claim, as reported from the Beijing demonstration, is one of scale rather than mechanism: the company says it has extended the same biology from a single consumer houseplant to over twenty ornamental species, with the stated goal of covering entire parks rather than windowsills. It is worth noting that this claim, unlike the Light Bio petunia, does not yet appear to be backed by a peer-reviewed publication detailing the modified species or the brightness achieved.
Is gene-editing the only route being explored?
No. Researchers at South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou have pursued a markedly different method, set out in a peer-reviewed study published last year in the Cell Press journal Matter. Rather than altering plant genes, the team injected the leaves of Echeveria succulents with phosphor particles of the kind used in glow-in-the-dark toys, calibrated to a size small enough to disperse through the plant’s internal tissue without damaging it. After a few minutes of exposure to sunlight, the treated succulents glowed in red, blue, green and white for up to two hours — bright enough, the researchers showed with an installation of 56 such plants, to read text by in the dark. “Imagine glowing trees replacing streetlights,” said Shuting Liu, the study’s lead author, in a statement accompanying the paper.
What are the limitations?
Both approaches confront the same basic constraint: brightness. Gene-edited plants emit a soft, sustained glow that remains far dimmer than conventional lighting, while phosphor-injected succulents fade within hours and must be periodically recharged in sunlight. Keith Wood, chief executive of Light Bio, has been candid about the distance between such demonstrations and a genuine lighting system, observing that efforts of this kind have so far fallen “spectacularly short of that objective”. Open questions also remain about the long-term health of gene-edited or phosphor-injected plants, the range of colours achievable, and whether either method can be scaled beyond a forum display case to an actual public space.
What lies ahead?
For now, the appeal of glowing vegetation outpaces its practical utility. Whether through borrowed fungal genes or injected phosphors, Chinese laboratories appear to be converging on a shared long-term vision — cities and gardens lit by biology rather than the electricity grid. Realising that vision at any meaningful scale, however, will require the kind of peer-reviewed scrutiny and brightness gains that, by most scientists’ own admission, have yet to materialise.
-Rashmi Kumari
