科學家創造出一種新植物，一輩子都會發光
The glowing greenhouse of our dreams is still so very far away, but it just got a tantalising nudge closer.
我們夢想中閃閃發光的溫室距離我們仍然很遙遠，但現在有了點吸引人的進展了。
Scientists have genetically engineered a plant with not just a visible glow, but a self-sustaining glow that lasts for the duration of the plant's life cycle.
科學家不僅是使用一點可見光對植物進行基因改造，而是讓植物一生都能靠自己持續發光。
It's a breathtaking improvement on previous glowing plants. It's brighter than previous genetically engineered tobacco plants, and it doesn't need to be fed with chemicals to maintain luminescence. Also, the duration of the glow is much longer than glowing plants produced using plant nanobionics.
這是在之前發光植物基礎上的驚人進步，比之前進行基因改造的菸草要更亮，也不需要添加化學物質來維持發光。發光時間也比採用植物納米仿生學的發光植物更長。
Of course, we all immediately think of a breathtaking Avatar-style night garden, glittering and gleaming in the darkness, and - further into the future - reducing our dependence on electric lighting.
當然，我們都立刻想到了令人驚歎的阿凡達式夜間花園，能在黑暗中閃閃發光，未來還能減少我們對電氣照明的依賴。
But glowing greenery could also help us understand the plants themselves - how their metabolism works, and how they respond to the world around them.
但發光的綠色植物也能幫助我們瞭解植物本身，它們是如何新陳代謝的，以及它們對周圍環境的反應。
The team worked on two species of tobacco plant. And, unlike previous genetically engineered glowing plants, which used bioluminescent bacteria or firefly DNA, these plants were engineered using the DNA of bioluminescent fungi.
這個團隊研究了兩種菸草。此前經過基因改造的發光植物利用的是生物發光細菌或螢火蟲的DNA，但這些植物不一樣，是利用生物發光真菌的DNA改造的。
"Although bacterial bioluminescence genes can be targeted to plastids to engineer autoluminescence, it is technically cumbersome and fails to produce sufficient light," the researchers wrote in their paper.
研究人員在論文中寫道：“雖然生物發光細菌基因可以針對質體設計自發光，但技術很複雜，發的光也不夠。”
"The caffeic acid cycle, which is a metabolic pathway responsible for luminescence in fungi, was recently characterised. We report light emission in Nicotiana tabacum and Nicotiana benthamiana plants without the addition of any exogenous substrate by engineering fungal bioluminescence genes into the plant nuclear genome."
“真菌發光的代謝途徑最近被確定爲咖啡酸循環，我們通過將真菌生物發光基因導入植物核基因組就使菸草和本氏煙發光了，無需添加任何外源底物。”
