Been working with Andreas in Europe on a biohacking project.
Recently the metabolic pathway with which Biolumenescent Fungi express their genes was discovered by a Russian team. We are going to order the DNA synthesized and transform it into Tobacco via agrobacteria. The project will cost roughly $2000 so we have been talking about ways to raise money.
My initial interest in this was due to a company called Glowing Plant, their project failed due to using genes from a bacterial system which was too energy intensive for the plants and the project wasnât executed well.
Attached is the DNA we are going to have synthesized based on the paper on biolumenescent Fungi.
This sounds fun. With enough success maybe we could create external lamps for the space, or at least get some very interesting pictures of a memberâs lungs.
Any chance you understand the modifications to shift the luminance towards red/infrared?
Transform it into tobacco as in into a tobacco plant? If you need plants/seedlings I might be able to acquire some. I grew up on a tobacco farm.
As far as fundraisers go you can always do a raffle or bazar if other groups from the DMS would be interested in donating items to help. You could give a presentation on your project to gauge interest (if itâs even allowed to ask) and see what happens!
Silent auctions have worked really well and are within the guidelines of fundraising. If youâre interested I can talk to you about what CA did and how it all went down. It was a great success only a few months ago.
Even if itâs not a formerly ratified board decision, itâs in the best interest of DMS to 1) control the number, and 2) use the limited number we are allowed by law in the best way we can.
Iâve looked into this issue before. Yes, raffles are gambling; but as a practical matter, the local district attorney and attorney general have the discretion to ignore it. When Texas gambling laws were rewritten in 1973, the State Bar proposal that was mostly adopted said this in the official commentary:
âUnhappily, these prohibitions apply literally to various forms of gambling that are usually condoned, e.g., matching coins in a coffee shop, church bingo games, and charity raffles. The difficulty in framing exceptions for socially accepted forms of gambling lies in the facility with which they may be used as loopholes by professional gambling promoters who are the target of the prohibition. Furthermore, the constitutional prohibition against the âestablishment of lotteries,â Tex.Const. art. III Sec 47, appears to preclude a statutory exemption for the gambling activities of churches and charities. Therefore, many socially accepted forms of gambling will be ignored at the prosecutorâs discretion, as under present law.â
So what Iâm saying is that if we call our local district attorney, he/she doesnât have a problem with what weâre doing, we can move forward on this if we want, and the risk would be mostly theoretical.
