FOR KAREN SARKISYAN, there are few things more awe-inspiring than a dark room full of glowing petunias. He wants more people to experience that magic and envisions a future lush with bioluminescent plants, like in the 2009 movie Avatar.

“I think there’s just a sense of intrinsic excitement about things that glow in the dark,” says Sarkisyan, a synthetic biologist at Imperial College London and one of the engineers behind the petunias. He is also cofounder of the Idaho-based biotech company Light Bio, which this month got permission from the US Department of Agriculture to sell its glowing petunias in the United States. The company is planning to start shipping the plants in early 2024.

omit

[50 WIRED, 2023.9.19, https://www.wired.com/story/here-come-the-glow-in-the-dark-houseplants/]