(Credit: Glowing Plant)
If you plan to fund the creation of a genetic hybrid on Kickstarter, you can no longer offer it to backers as a reward. The Web site has added a new term to its guidelines stating that “projects cannot offer genetically modified organisms as a reward.”
The new rule came into effect after the successful funding of Glowing Plants, a project to modify Arabidopsis and rose plants with firefly and luminescent bacteria DNA so they would glow in the dark, providing a natural light source. The project, created by trained biologists, offered the seeds of the plant, if successfully created, for $40. The project raked in $484,013 — from a goal of $65,000 — from 8,433 backers.
But the project spurred debate in the scientific community. GMO is supposed to be tightly controlled, for very good reason. When you release a genetically modified plant into the environment, there is no way of knowing what effects it may have on that environment. Case in point: thanks to transgenes, a type of weed in China has benefited from a genetic pesticide resistance built into other plants and become more hardy as a result.
And… [Read more]
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