Friday, September 9, 2022

Bioluminescence/Fluorescence (plants)

Question: Are there any naturally fluorescent plants?

Comment: Do you mean bioluminescence (glow in the dark) maybe instead of fluorescence (emit a different color when exposed to a certain wavelength of light)? I think all plants fluoresce - chlorophyll was already mentioned as a fluorescent molecule, and there are many phenolics and secondary metabolites in plants that fluoresce as well. I think pretty much everyone who has ever done fluorescence microscopy on plant samples knows about the issues with background noise that can be caused by this autofluorescence when trying to observe a genetically introduced molecule such as green or red fluorescent proteins.

However, when it comes to bioluminescence such as the glow of a firefly or the light emitted by some deep sea creatures, I am not aware of any plants that can do that unless genetically engineered by introducing the luciferin gene and provided with the appropriate substrate. The only “plant-like” organisms that I can think of that do that are some algae, specifically dinoflagellates, which aren’t even in the kingdom Plantae. They make ocean water glow in the dark when swirled up.

Comment: chlorophyll fluoresces red under UV light. so i would think most plants are fluorescent to some degree.

Comment: Other than induced fluorescence I don’t know of any examples of naturally fluorescing plants.

Fungi, on the other hand, have a number of species that naturally glow. Of course, those aren’t plants, but at least they’re not animals.

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February 31, 1869

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