Release time: February 14, 2025 | Source: Hefei Daily

During the Spring Festival, Hefei local enterprise Shenbi Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shenbi Bio") officially launched its first consumer-grade product, the luminous plant gift box, with sales exceeding 2,000 orders within one month of its launch. This means that China’s first gene-edited high-brightness self-luminous plant has officially entered the industrialization stage. On February 14, the reporter walked into the company's laboratory. After the lights were turned off, a row of seemingly ordinary plant seedlings gradually glowed with soft fluorescence, like stars falling into the world.

01 From science fiction to reality Gene editing lights up the "light of nature"

Li Renhan, the 28-year-old company founder, holds a PhD in biology from China Agricultural University and studied under Sun Qixin, president of China Agricultural University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He led his team to successfully implant gene fragments of deep-sea luminescent microorganisms into plant cells through gene editing technology, enabling plants to autonomously and continuously glow in dark environments. At present, this technology has been successfully applied to more than 20 kinds of plants such as sunflowers and petunias. The laboratory is accelerating the research and development of the luminescent properties of ornamental flowers such as roses and lotus.

"The shock brought by fireflies in my childhood, coupled with the inspiration from the dreamy forest in "Avatar", made me firmly believe in the application prospects of bioluminescence technology." Li Renhan said that after more than 500 experiments, the team finally overcame the brightness problem in July 2024. Its luminous intensity has reached the level of ordinary night lights, and it plans to increase it to moonlight brightness in the future.

02 An email affects the road to entrepreneurship. HKUST Silicon Valley becomes the “cradle of innovation”

At the beginning of 2023, Li Renhan, who was still studying for his doctorate, sent an entrepreneurial consultation email to Hefei High-tech Zone, and within 48 hours he received an invitation to settle in "HKUST Silicon Valley". This new innovation platform with the transformation of scientific and technological achievements as its core provides him with full-chain support from laboratory preparation to industrial docking.

"At that time, I went to more than 20 investment institutions with my PPT, and finally obtained angel investment from Meihua Venture Capital through the government." Li Renhan recalled that within one year of the company's establishment, the team expanded from 3 to 25 people, the R&D base area exceeded 1,000 square meters, and a production line with a monthly production capacity of 500,000 plants was built in Luyang District.

In 2024, the company completed two consecutive rounds of tens of millions of yuan in financing, with investors including Meihua Venture Capital, HKUST Silicon Valley Fund, Hefei Hi-tech Investment, etc.

03 The rise of the “l(fā)uminous economy” opens up hundreds of billions of application scenarios

At present, Shenbi Biotech has launched its first consumer product - a luminous plant gift box, priced at 90 yuan per unit. Sales exceeded 2,000 orders within one month of its launch, and have been sold as far away as Xinjiang, Yunnan and other places. "The exclamations of children opening gift boxes and the romantic scenes of couples admiring flowers at night allow us to see the market potential." Li Renhan revealed that the company is negotiating cooperation with multiple scenic spots and plans to create immersive night tour projects such as "Glowing Flower Sea" and "Fluorescent Lotus Pond" in the future.

At the same time, the team extracted higher-brightness luminescent genes from deep-sea microorganisms in the South China Sea and plans to develop derivatives such as active night lights and ecological fountains.

As a company recruitment project in Silicon Valley of HKUST, Shenbi Biotechnology enjoys its various scientific innovation services and investment services. According to data from the USTC Silicon Valley Company, as of 2024, there will be more than 1,200 new technology companies in the area, with a total fund size of 200 billion yuan.

The relevant person in charge of Silicon Valley of HKUST said that the platform will accelerate the commercialization process of cutting-edge technologies such as synthetic biology by setting up special funds and jointly establishing talent training bases with universities. With the launch of the first bioluminescent plant products and other organisms, Hefei is expected to form a new growth pole in the biomanufacturing industry.

When night falls, the laboratory of Magic Pen Biology is still brightly lit. This group of researchers, whose average age is less than 30 years old, is trying to rewrite the laws of nature with genetic code, and their innovative stories are like those quietly glowing plants, blooming with a unique light in Hefei, a hot land of scientific innovation.

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