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Green sea slug is part plant, part animal.

Risen

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This shit reminds me of Pokemon or something. Apparently this special sea slug may have the genes for synthesizing chlorophyll in its own genome, taken from plant DNA, as well as chloroplasts gotten from the algae it eats. IOW, this slug can use photosynthesis just like a plant, which is the reason it doesn't need to eat but ONCE in its entire life.

Green Sea Slug Is Part Animal, Part Plant | Wired Science | Wired.com

green_sea_slug.jpg


SEATTLE — It’s easy being green for a sea slug that has stolen enough genes to become the first animal shown to make chlorophyll like a plant.

sciencenewsShaped like a leaf itself, the slug Elysia chlorotica already has a reputation for kidnapping the photosynthesizing organelles and some genes from algae. Now it turns out that the slug has acquired enough stolen goods to make an entire plant chemical-making pathway work inside an animal body, says Sidney K. Pierce of the University of South Florida in Tampa.

The slugs can manufacture the most common form of chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants that captures energy from sunlight, Pierce reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Pierce used a radioactive tracer to show that the slugs were making the pigment, called chlorophyll a, themselves and not simply relying on chlorophyll reserves stolen from the algae the slugs dine on.

“This could be a fusion of a plant and an animal — that’s just cool,” said invertebrate zoologist John Zardus of The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.

Microbes swap genes readily, but Zardus said he couldn’t think of another natural example of genes flowing between multicellular kingdoms.

Pierce emphasized that this green slug goes far beyond animals such as corals that host live-in microbes that share the bounties of their photosynthesis. Most of those hosts tuck in the partner cells whole in crevices or pockets among host cells. Pierce’s slug, however, takes just parts of cells, the little green photosynthetic organelles called chloroplasts, from the algae it eats. The slug’s highly branched gut network engulfs these stolen bits and holds them inside slug cells.

Some related slugs also engulf chloroplasts but E. chlorotica alone preserves the organelles in working order for a whole slug lifetime of nearly a year. The slug readily sucks the innards out of algal filaments whenever they’re available, but in good light, multiple meals aren’t essential. Scientists have shown that once a young slug has slurped its first chloroplast meal from one of its few favored species of Vaucheria algae, the slug does not have to eat again for the rest of its life. All it has to do is sunbathe.

But the chloroplasts need a continuous supply of chlorophyll and other compounds that get used up during photosynthesis. Back in their native algal cells, chloroplasts depended on algal cell nuclei for the fresh supplies. To function so long in exile, “chloroplasts might have taken a go-cup with them when they left the algae,” Pierce said.

There have been previous hints, however, that the chloroplasts in the slug don’t run on stored-up supplies alone. Starting in 2007, Pierce and his colleagues, as well as another team, found several photosynthesis-related genes in the slugs apparently lifted directly from the algae. Even unhatched sea slugs, which have never encountered algae, carry “algal” photosynthetic genes.

At the meeting, Pierce described finding more borrowed algal genes in the slug genome for enzymes in a chlorophyll-synthesizing pathway. Assembling the whole compound requires some 16 enzymes and the cooperation of multiple cell components. To see whether the slug could actually make new chlorophyll a to resupply the chloroplasts, Pierce and his colleagues turned to slugs that hadn’t fed for at least five months and had stopped releasing any digestive waste. The slugs still contained chloroplasts stripped from the algae, but any other part of the hairy algal mats should have been long digested, he said.

After giving the slugs an amino acid labeled with radioactive carbon, Pierce and his colleagues identified a radioactive product as chlorophyll a. The radioactively tagged compound appeared after a session of slug sunbathing but not after letting slugs sit in the dark. A paper with details of the work is scheduled to appear in the journal Symbiosis.

Zardus, who says that he tries to maintain healthy skepticism as a matter of principle, would like to hear more about how the team controlled for algal contamination. The possibilities for the borrowed photosynthesis are intriguing though, he says. Mixing the genomes of algae and animals could certainly complicate tracing out evolutionary history. In the tree of life, he said, the green sea slug “raises the possibility of branch tips touching.”

“Bizarre,” said Gary Martin, a crustacean biologist at Occidental College in Los Angeles. “Steps in evolution can be more creative than I ever imagined.”
 

Mad Hatter

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That's weird, and cool :D

I've always thought that Euglena was the only plant/animal hybrid there is (photosynthesis + phagocytosis). It's probably much easier to realize in a unicellar organism.

Thanks for the very interesting link!
 

Magic Poriferan

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Sounds like it would still be an animal.

I do believe there is a photosynthetic butterfly, no? I don't remember. It would have worked differently, though. This slug is still very fascinating.
 

Blackmail!

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I'm wondering if we cook the poor beast, whether it will taste like a sea snail or a vegetable? :thinking:
 

nightning

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Why not taste like snail with veggie?

All the weird things out there. Thanks Risen :)
 

Valiant

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Interesting... I wonder if it (the DNA) could be implanted in mammals? What would it result in?
 

CuriousFeeling

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I wonder what causes the presence of algal DNA in the slug DNA. Perhaps a mutation of some sort.
 

Valiant

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Monsanto already has scientists working on that. They'll release an untested prototype into the wild next year.

Ha-ha :jew:

Just think of the possibilities, though. :yes:
 

teslashock

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I wonder what causes the presence of algal DNA in the slug DNA. Perhaps a mutation of some sort.

Well that's kind of how evolution works :yes:

It's also possible that the slug and the algae were acting synergistically, and at some point they became completely dependent on each other to the extent that algal DNA was incorporated into the slug's physiological being. Ya know, the whole endosymbiotic theory (mostly referenced when speaking of mitochondria in eukaryotic cells...).
 

nomadic

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what a low maintenance pet. u only feed it once in its entire life. lolz
 

CuriousFeeling

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Well that's kind of how evolution works :yes:

It's also possible that the slug and the algae were acting synergistically, and at some point they became completely dependent on each other to the extent that algal DNA was incorporated into the slug's physiological being. Ya know, the whole endosymbiotic theory (mostly referenced when speaking of mitochondria in eukaryotic cells...).

That was another hypothesis I had too, despite I think the endosymbiotic theory would apply to the slug/algae combination quite a ways back on the phylogenetic tree. Would be interesting to see what two organisms linked up with each other. It's just a matter of figuring out how they became dependent on each other, assuming that hypothesis is retained. If it's a mutation, then we'd have to compare normal sea slug DNA sequence to the other one.
 

Llewellyn

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Very interesting.

Now to find the gene (if it is actually incorporated in the slug's genotype, and not a symbiosis) so that we can implant it in ourselves. That's my dream.
 

Asterion

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Monsanto already has scientists working on that. They'll release an untested prototype into the wild next year.

bulbasaur.png


frog + plant is the next project. I just worked out what we're doing with those cane toads here in australia.

...and on a side note, this futher supports my conclusion that japan doesn't really exist. /intuition
 
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