Chloroplasts

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Video - Choroplasts in cytoplasmic streaming http://www.neok12.com/video/Photosynthesis/zX4b7a504d047d5b6e660173.htm Video - Chloroplasts functioning in Sea Slug https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16124-solar-powered-sea-slug-harnesses-stolen-plant-genes/

http://creation.com/photosynthetic-sea-slugs

__ Solar Powered Sea Slug Harnesses Stolen Plant Organelles __

It’s the ultimate form of solar power: eat a plant, become photosynthetic. Now researchers have found how one animal does just that.

It’s the ultimate form of solar power: eat a plant, become photosynthetic. Now researchers have found how one animal does just that.

Elysia chlorotica is a lurid green sea slug, with a gelatinous leaf-shaped body, that lives along the Atlantic seaboard of the US. What sets it apart from most other sea slugs is its ability to run on solar power.

Mary Rumpho of the University of Maine, is an expert on E. chlorotica and has now discovered how the sea slug gets this ability: it photosynthesises with genes “stolen” from the algae it eats.

She has known for some time that E. chlorotica acquires chloroplasts – the green cellular objects that allow plant cells to convert sunlight into energy – from the algae it eats, and stores them in the cells that line its gut.

Young E. chlorotica fed with algae for two weeks, could survive for the rest of their year-long lives without eating, Rumpho found in earlier work.

But a mystery remained. Chloroplasts only contain enough DNA to encode about 10% of the proteins needed to keep themselves running. The other necessary genes are found in the algae’s nuclear DNA. “So the question has always been, how do they continue to function in an animal cell missing all of these proteins,” says Rumpho.

Gene ‘theft’ In their latest experiments, Rumpho and colleagues sequenced the chloroplast genes of Vaucheria litorea, the alga that is the sea slug’s favourite snack. They confirmed that if the sea slug used the algal chloroplasts alone, it would not have all the genes needed to photosynthesise.

They then turned their attention to the sea slug’s own DNA and found one of the vital algal genes was present. Its sequence was identical to the algal version, indicating that the slug had probably stolen the gene from its food. “We do not know how this is possible and can only postulate on it,” says Rumpho, who says that the theory of gene stealing is known as kleptoplasty.

In another surprising development, the researchers found the algal gene in E. chlorotica‘s sex cells, meaning the ability to maintain functional chloroplasts could be passed to the next generation.

The researchers believe many more photosynthesis genes are acquired by E. chlorotica from their food, but still need to understand how the plant genes are activated inside sea-slug cells. [] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2939249/The-solar-powered-SLUG-Creature-steals-genes-algae-eats-photosynthesise-like-leaf.html