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UltravioletPhotography

Glowing Plants


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Sadly, in Italy it is illegal to grow GMOs, but we import GMO food, so we still eat it (the hypocrisy). I am 100% pro GMOs.

 

Anyway, imagine a UV glowing plant, how cool would it be?

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Stefano, That is an interesting question, if there are any bioluminescent examples that emit UV. Maybe Shane would know.

That would be quite interesting to know if any life form emits UV-LUM.

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I know there are blue-emitting life forms, so UV may not be that strange. The main problem is absorption by basically anything (foliage is black in UV probably due to chlorophyll), but I can imagine a life form which adapted to emit UV.
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dabateman

TagBFP is the closest I have ever used. Its a monomeric blue fluorescent protein. With excitation at 400nm and emission around 450nm.

It was engineered by mutations, so not naturally occurring.

Its been sometime, I will have to look this up.

There are some common UV lines used in microscopy, so you can use one of these in Forrester resonance energy transfer (FRET) studies. Basically you hit with low wavelength light and look for the emmission of your second fluorescent molecule, as it gets excited by the emmission of your first.

Most common chemical pair is fluorecein and rhodamine.

 

 

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dabateman

Interesting just found this:

Additionally, Photophysiology: Action of Light on Animals and Microorganisms; Photobiochemical Mechanisms; Bioluminescence cites the findings of Cormier and Eckroade (1962) of evidence of bioluminescent emission in the UV wavelengths in three species of the Renilla genus (commonly called sea pansies; these effects were later investigated by Hart et al. (1979)). It's important to note that the emission of photons in UV wavelengths is only due to a "tailing off" of the spectral energy distribution in the bioluminescence of these species.

 

Feasibility is more complicated. The mechanism2 is

L+O2+ATP→oxy-L+CO2+AMP+PP+light

as mediated by the enzyme luciferase using one of the luciferin pigments. Essentially, the luciferin changes from an excited state to a ground state. Now, we can postulate the existence of a luciferin with an energy difference between these two states exactly right to produce one or more UV photons; in fact, Biology: The Unity and Diversity of Life claims that "some even emit ultraviolet or infrared light" but doesn't specify which luciferins it is referencing.

 

From here:

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/45741/ultraviolet-bioluminescence

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