Aesthetic Biotech: Petunias, Iridescence, and Flamethrowers
For centuries, plant breeders have dominated the aesthetic plant domain, mostly through hybridization. Orchid breeders, the interesting folks they are, have also tried various clever attempts at inducing random mutations, like microwaving seeds and smothering them in mutagenic chemicals, with hopes of landing the next big winner.
But while breeding can produce fascinating results, it’s essentially a game of chance.
A biotechnological approach, however, provides a unique set of benefits. Foremost among them, it offers more precision, and the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding into their physiological development.
It also fills out the middle-ground in the discussion about what’s ethical in biotechnology. For arguments for and against GMO food consumption, how do they work once applied to GMOs that are purely decorative? As a society, we’re still developing perspectives on what’s acceptable in biotech, and still grappling with our complex relationship with nature. Aesthetic biotech enriches those discussions.
To this end, aesthetic biotech is also inherently visual, providing an opportunity to “see” the science. In bio terms, the assay is the phenotype itself. This holds the opportunity to pique the curiosity of non-scientists, and help them understand that the way the biological world works.
Apart from Glowing Plant, RevolutionBio is one of the early players to step confidently into the aesthetic plant domain, using recent petunia research to control flower color and form.
For so long now, biotechnology has lacked the fun, playful, exploratory element that the computer world has benefitted from. It’s been stuffy, formal, slow, and rigid.
RevolutionBio is helping to fix that. On the interaction design front, they’re playing with ideas for abstracting variables for petunia morphology into a user-friendly interface:
This is a great example of biotech seen through a more interactive lens. A lens that opens up opportunities for playful exploration of current models, which would otherwise be constrained to dry, technical research papers.
There’s a need for a looser, more interactive, more creative and exploratory set of tools in science. When creativity is coupled with engineering, so much more can be unleashed.
Which leads me to Peacock Tobacco, currently the main project for the Plant Bio Group at CCL.
Iridescence is a property shared by a number of tropical understory plants, one of them being a particular species of begonia. Our goal is to take the iridescence from this begonia, drop it into tobacco, and then amplify it, creating iridescent tobacco.
Why tobacco? Very simply: It grows easily, is temperate, is a well-understood model organism, and looks pretty cool.
Now the thing to appreciate about begonias is their leaves. Their leaves have tremendous variety of color, form, and texture. When it comes to the plant aesthetics, flowers typically to grab all of the attention. But the problem with flowers is that they’re temporal: they bloom, then they die, then maybe bloom again. But stylish evergreen leaves, like those of the begonia, are a baseline component of the plant itself.
This certainly won’t be as easy as it sounds. But if we‘re able to pull it off, we’ll not only be making a damn cool iridescent plant that grows in temperate climates, but also be the first to transplant a major organelle from one plant family into another. This has big potential for plant biotechnology, which I’ll detail out in a separate post.
Chambeyronia macrocarpa — The Flamethrower Palm — another tropical plant with exceptional beauty.
When I first saw this tree, it jolted me. I immediately emailed the Bay’s local palm expert, Jason Dewees, and asked how to get ahold of something like this:
You’re out of luck, he told me. These only grow in high-humid, tropical climates, and only the young leaves are red.
I don’t plan on giving up on this one. How can we design a temperate palm tree that throws red leaves? Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
One day, one day.