The plants that light up your everyday

Imagine you’re in the lounge and it’s lit up by your ficus, or picture yourself walking down a street illuminated by plane trees. Utopia? Perhaps not…and certainly not for the many researchers that are aiming to revolutionise the use of plants in our daily lives.

© MIT

a brilliant innovation: create luminous plants

Nowadays you hear a lot about the climate challenge and the urgent need to reduce our energy consumption for the good of our planet. It’s therefore not at all surprising to see innovations like this blossoming, focusing on the most respectful use of the Earth’s resources.

One such innovation is a project from several of the engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, United States, who are aiming to transform plants into veritable sources of light. How?  With the help of technology that uses nanoparticles and luciferin. You know; the molecule that makes fireflies light up.

©  Jessica Lucia

lighting that requires no plugs

The long term objective is to make plants produce light without having to be plugged in. When you consider that lighting accounts for nearly 20% of all global energy use, it’s clear that this innovation would be most welcome. At the moment, by soaking the plants in a liquid mixture of luciferase, luciferin (which combines with the former to create light) and coenzyme A (which protects the luciferase against chemical reactions that might impede it), researchers have managed to make plants shine for between 45 minutes and 3h30! Plants that have undergone this experiment include rocket, kale, spinach and watercress.

plants that never go out

Whilst the intensity of the light produced is still too weak to serve as anything other than a reading lamp, scientists are sure that they’ll be able to increase the intensity and duration of this light. They now want to find a way of making the nanoparticles integrate with the plants more easily, removing the need for them to be soaked in this solution. Above all, they’re working on technology that will make a plant shine for its entire lifespan.

illuminating cancerous cells

A Russian start-up, Planta, is also developing this idea and is going further still by suggesting that this technology might allow them to create innovative medicines that provide a high-quality look at the spread of cancerous cells. In the meantime, the company is specialising in the creation and sale of luminous plants in just a few years, when progress will have been made in improving the intensity of the light and prolonging its duration.

So who knows: perhaps in the not-to-distant future NOMAD bedrooms won’t have mobile lamps but mobile plants, which you can place wherever you like?

©  Nomad Hotels