SCIENCE MASTER SCHEME : ORGANIC LAMPS

It's a night light. It's a plant. Researchers have induced a succulent to get a glow on.

Plants already aid us in countless ways - feeding and clothing us and providing the very air we breathe. Someday, they may also help us find the bathroom at night.

In a new paper, researchers at South China Agricultural University described how they created glow-in-the-dark plants by injecting synthetic materials into the tissues of living succulents.

These bionic botanicals can be made to emit light in a variety of colors and can '' recharge '' with light exposure.

The succulents got their glow-up at the University's Key Laboratory for Biobased Materials and Energy. The lab often explores techno-plant mash-ups. For this project, they wanted to create '' a living, light-charged plant lamp,'' said Shuting Liu, a lab affiliate and the first author of the paper.

Although glowing plants are seen in many sci-fi worlds, they have existed in our real one only since the 1980s, when researchers spliced a gene from fireflies into tobacco plants, including commercially available glowing petunias.

Ms. Liu's team worked with a human-made material called strontium aluminate, the same stuff that is in the glow-in-the-dark stars you might attach to your bedroom ceiling.

Unlike bioluminescence, which is produced by continuous chemical reactions, strontium aluminate exhibits phosphorescence : It soaks up and stores energy from external light and then releases it slowly over time.

WHILE strontium aluminate has been incorporated into plants before, Ms. Liu tried to achieve a brighter glow by using larger particles, each around the size of a human red blood cell.

For a while, she said, this meant '' continuous trial and error '' as she injected different plants. In those like bok choy and pothos, the particles became stuck within the plant tissue, with blotchy results.

Eventually Ms. Liu turned to a rosette-shaped succulent called Echeveria Mebina, and found that '' the size of the intercellular channels is just right '' to produce a uniform glow.

'' Within just a few seconds, an entire life was shimmering,'' she said. '' I was struck by how beautiful it looked almost like glowing emeralds.''

The World Students Society thanks Cara Giaimo.