Solar powered sea slugs shed light on search for perpetual green energy
In an amazing achievement akin to adding solar panels to your body, a
Northeast sea slug sucks raw materials from algae to provide its
lifetime supply of solar-powered energy, according to a study by Rutgers
University-New Brunswick and other scientists.“It’s a remarkable feat because it’s highly unusual for
an animal to behave like a plant and survive solely on photosynthesis,”
said Debashish Bhattacharya, senior author of the study and
distinguished professor in the Department of Biochemistry and
Microbiology at Rutgers-New Brunswick. “The broader implication is in
the field of artificial photosynthesis. That is, if we can figure out
how the slug maintains stolen, isolated plastids to fix carbon
without the plant nucleus, then maybe we can also harness isolated
plastids for eternity as green machines to create bioproducts or energy.
The existing paradigm is that to make green energy, we need the plant
or alga to run the photosynthetic organelle, but the slug shows us that
this does not have to be the case.”
The sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, steals millions of green-colored
plastids, which are like tiny solar panels, from algae.Credit: Karen N.
Pelletreau/University of Maine
Cheong Xin Chan, Pavel Vaysberg, Dana C Price, Karen N Pelletreau,
Mary E Rumpho, Debashish Bhattacharya. Active Host Response to Algal
Symbionts in the Sea Slug Elysia chlorotica. Molecular Biology and
Evolution, 2018; DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msy061
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