科学家创造出一种新植物，一辈子都会发光

The glowing greenhouse of our dreams is still so very far away, but it just got a tantalising nudge closer.

我们梦想中闪闪发光的温室距离我们仍然很遥远，但现在有了点吸引人的进展了。

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.

科学家不仅是使用一点可见光对植物进行基因改造，而是让植物一生都能靠自己持续发光。

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.

这是在之前发光植物基础上的惊人进步，比之前进行基因改造的烟草要更亮，也不需要添加化学物质来维持发光。发光时间也比采用植物纳米仿生学的发光植物更长。

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.

当然，我们都立刻想到了令人惊叹的阿凡达式夜间花园，能在黑暗中闪闪发光，未来还能减少我们对电气照明的依赖。

But glowing greenery could also help us understand the plants themselves - how their metabolism works, and how they respond to the world around them.

但发光的绿色植物也能帮助我们了解植物本身，它们是如何新陈代谢的，以及它们对周围环境的反应。

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.

这个团队研究了两种烟草。此前经过基因改造的发光植物利用的是生物发光细菌或萤火虫的DNA，但这些植物不一样，是利用生物发光真菌的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.

研究人员在论文中写道：“虽然生物发光细菌基因可以针对质体设计自发光，但技术很复杂，发的光也不够。”

"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."

“真菌发光的代谢途径最近被确定为咖啡酸循环，我们通过将真菌生物发光基因导入植物核基因组就使烟草和本氏烟发光了，无需添加任何外源底物。”