Why has it been so hard to make glowing plants?

Refers to: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601884/why-kickstarters-glowing-plant-left-backers-in-the-dark/

A peer-reviewed 2010 academic study showed it's possible to make glowing plants (See below from 1).

They claimed to have (1),

'generated the first truly autonomously luminescent (autoluminescent) transplastomic plants, containing a fully functional bacterial luciferase pathway, which emits visible light detectable by the naked eye'

Antonio Regalado writes in the MIT Technology Review (2),

'the scientist who carried out that work, Alexander Krichevsky, says it took him three years leading a lab at a well-equipped university, SUNY Stonybrook, to do it’

In the age of the Anthropocene, the Kickstarter Glowing Plants project's premise was altogether too beguiling, create glowing trees to light streets. However, that it took several years of effort for a dedicated, well-equipped academic lab to make one dimly glowing plant shows it takes a lot more cutting edge molecular biology than this team seems to have bargained for and highlights their scale of exaggeration (2).

'Krichevsky has since started his own glowing plant company, Bioglow, and says he has spent another three years trying to make the plants bright enough to interest consumers, a task which is ongoing. He says it was obvious to anyone in plant biology that Taxa’s timelines were unrealistic. “I was surprised by the promises they made. I thought, maybe they know something I don’t. Now I see that it is delusional,” he says. “They didn’t deliver anything for three years and I strongly doubt they ever will.”'

In hindsight, their Kickstarter campaign was a casualty of the two opposing yet irresistible forces that drove it in the first place. A biting-off-more-than-one-can-chew mindset within their team and the investors' scientific babes-in-arms credulousness.

Bioluminescence is an ancient biological property found in all major phyla on land and water including bacteria, fungi, fireflies, squid, earthworms and fishes. Essential bioluminescence components are Luciferin and Luciferase. Depending on the type of luciferin, bioluminescence can emit light ranging from 400nm to 700nm (3), i.e., colors ranging from blue, green, yellow, pink to red. In the presence of ATP and oxygen, the luciferase enzyme converts one molecule of luciferin protein to one of oxyluciferin, a process that generates one photon of light. Since a standard 100W light bulb can emit quintillions of photons per second, the 2010 report shows that making just one small plant dimly glow requires tremendous feats of genetic engineering.

Now renamed Taxa Biotechnologies, the Glowing Plant project team's penchant for inflated claims shows in the way they obviously felt no qualms about appropriating an image from the first genetically engineered glowing plant reported all the way back in 1986 and using it without attribution on their merchandise (see below from 4, 5, also pointed out by 6).

Unlike the original 1986 report which inserted only the luciferase enzyme into the tobacco plant genome and thus required luciferin supplied from outside to drive the 'glow' reaction, Krichevsky et al (1) made their plant autonomously bioluminescent by inserting genes for both luciferin and luciferase enzyme into it, using technology similar to the one the Glowing Plant project needed to use (1). For the Glowing Plants project to skirt loopholes in US law regarding Genetically modified organism (GMO) and ensure their glowing plants-to-be wouldn't be subject to regulation at all meant using the Gene gun to introduce the 'glow' genes into plants (2). Essentially this is an air pistol that shoots the gene-coated gold pellet into the intended target cell, in this case a plant cell. Given the amount of money they raised, ~half a million US dollars (2), other than absence of focus and determination, no reason why they couldn't have at least replicated Krichevsky et al's efforts over the 3 years they'd been working on this project.

Bibliography

1. Krichevsky, Alexander, et al. "Autoluminescent plants." PloS one 5.11 (2010): e15461. http://journals.plos.org/plosone...

2. MIT Technology Review, Antonio Regalado, July 15, 2016. Why the promise of a plant that glows has left backers in the dark

3. Widder, Edith A. "Bioluminescence in the ocean: origins of biological, chemical, and ecological diversity." Science 328.5979 (2010): 704-708. https://www.researchgate.net/pro...

4. Ow, David W., et al. "Transient and stable expression of the firefly luciferase gene in plant cells and transgenic plants." Science 234 (1986): 856-859. https://www.researchgate.net/pro... Glowing Plant | Merchandise

5. Glowing Plant | Merchandise

6. Illumination blog, Kevin M. Folta, July 19, 2016. Unfilled Glowing Plant Promises Harm Science Perception

Thanks for the R2A, Jonathan Brill.

https://www.quora.com/Why-has-it-been-so-hard-to-make-glowing-plants/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala