Matt wrote: ↑Sat Oct 31, 2020 2:00 pm
optique wrote:I am no expert but i cant see CP's that glow very long or very bright. the energy requirements must be a strain on normal plants.
Did you read the article? From what I recall reading, they genetically engineered the flytrap to create bioluminescence by introducing a gene for a calcium sensor protein called GCaMP6, which glows green whenever it binds to calcium. They then proved that it was calcium ions rushing through the trap that actually caused the trap to snap shut after reaching a certain threshold. So yeah, the glowing wouldn't last long -- just when the trap pushes calcium through it to trigger it to close and, I suppose, however long it would take for it to flush out the calcium.
Oh! I've used GCaMP6 in neurons in my grad school research! It is insanely cool to see it in a flytrap leaf.
It actually might be
worse for the plant to try and get it to glow really bright with GCaMP6 than some protein like GFP that just glows all the time, come to think of it. Making too much of a fluorescent protein uses up a lot of energy, but making too much of a calcium indicator...binds up all the cell's calcium. And calcium is
really important for a huge number of signaling processes in cells, so you really don't want it all going to making GCaMP6 glow. Probably best to keep it on the dim side, unfortunately : (