New Episode: How to Design Flowers @NickDesnoyer uses genetic engineering, breeding, and pathogens to design and then create flowers that don't exist anywhere else on Earth. We talked about how he does it, in a room surrounded by many of his creations. At the start of the episode, Nick reveals his next project, called Paintunia, which is an engineered line of petunia that acts as a living canvas. He has engineered these petunias to include an inducible gene; when he lightly touches their buds with a molecule called dexamethasone, the molecules seep into cells, switch on the gene, and cause them to make a pigment. The result is a paintable flower, where molecules literally control which colors show up in particular places. Nick’s plan is ultimately to engineer these petunias to express three separate colors, for cyan, magenta, and yellow. Nick's ultimate dream is to build a botanical garden full of weird and wonderful flowers that exist nowhere else. We filmed this episode surrounded by flowers, and he patiently explained to me how each one gets its shape and pigmentation; how he combines breeding and genetic engineering to make new flowers; and how he searches scientific papers for mutations to figure out which plant crosses to make next. I think he convinced me that designing new kinds of flowers makes us look more closely at nature, and appreciate it more deeply. After all, all the genes and variations he uses in the laboratory are based on designs that have evolved elsewhere. Hope you enjoy!