In nature, many organisms glow in the dark, including lightning bugs, some squid and jellyfish, using light to attract a mate or lure prey. Now, researchers have engineered glowing succulents, plants that recharge in sunlight and shine bright at night, an early step toward living, energy-free light sources.
The study team, led by Shuting Liu, with the South China Agricultural University, told Mongabay by email they wanted “to move beyond the usual color limitations of plant luminescence, and to give plants a new, photosynthesis-independent way to store and release light — essentially, a living, light-charged plant lamp.”
To make a “plant lamp,” the study team injected the plants’ leaves with light-storing microparticles called phosphors. The particles absorb light when it’s available and continue to glow when the light source is removed, much like glow-in-the-dark stickers.
Previous work to create glowing plants has focused on transferring glow-in-the-dark genes from organisms like fireflies or mushrooms into plants such as tobacco and petunias.
The new study is the first to introduce microparticles to a plant to make it shine, the researchers say. This approach allowed them to overcome the previous limitation that plants could only glow in the green spectrum. They note that they have now successfully created “the world’s first plants with visible blue, green, red, and blue-violet afterglow.”
The researchers tried loading the leaves of other plants, including golden pothos and bok choy with phosphors. However, they found their approach worked best on succulents, which could be engineered to shine about as brightly as a night-light.
However, introducing synthetic microparticles into plant leaves does raise questions. “What happens to the microparticles once the plant dies? This should be a primary concern for any of these man-made technologies,” Scott Lenaghan, co-director of the Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology at the University of Tennessee, U.S., who wasn’t involved in the study, told The New York Times.
Liu told Mongabay her team is “actively studying the long‑term safety of these inorganic afterglow materials in plants.”
The potential effects microparticles might have on animals that eat the plants is also potentially concerning. Liu said they have carried out preliminary toxicity tests in plant cells, “but we have not yet evaluated safety in animals, including in cases of ingestion.”
Another challenge is that a succulent’s glow lasts for about two hours and becomes much dimmer after about 30 minutes.
Still, Liu is optimistic that her glowing plants have a bright future once her team confirms their safety and works out how to make them illuminate for longer.
“One could imagine gardens or public spaces softly illuminated at night by glowing plants — a form of living, energy saving light bulbs that are as aesthetic as they are functional,” she said.
Banner image: Researchers have engineered glow-in-the-dark succulents. Image courtesy of Liu et al., Matter 2025 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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