The brilliant emerald green sea slug , Elysia chlorotica , spends month living on sunlight just like plants . It ’s been ring the photosynthesizing sea slug in the past tense , but how it manage to do this as well as it does is a complete mystery . In a newstudyappearing in theBiological Bulletin , researchers reveal that the ocean clout has incorporated genes from the algae that it eats .
" There is no way of life on earth that genes from an algae should work inside an brute cell,“saysSidney Pierce from the University of South Florida . " And yet here , they do . They allow the fauna to rely on sunshine for its nutrition . So if something happens to their food source , they have a way of not starving to death until they observe more alga to eat . "
Chloroplast are plant life cell organ that hold chlorophyl , the green photosynthetic paint . Researchers have known since the seventies that this sea slug steals chloroplasts from the algaVaucheria litorea . The ocean slug engraft the chloroplasts into their own digestive cell , where the cell organelle continue to photosynthesize for up to nine months — that ’s even longer than they would perform in algae . The ocean sluggard rest nourished thanks to the saccharide and lipids produced with photosynthesis .
But until now , no one knew for indisputable how the slug manage to maintain these pilfered chloroplast . Using DNA amplification , sequence , and advanced mental imagery techniques , Pierce and fellow worker let out that the sea slug ’s chromosome contain genes from the alga that codification for both chloroplast proteins and chlorophyll synthesis .
" This newspaper affirm that one of several algal genes require to repair impairment to chloroplasts , and keep them officiate , is present on the slug chromosome , " Pierce explains in anews release . " The factor is incorporated into the slug chromosome and transmitted to the next multiplication of bullet . " And even though succeeding slugs will need to kidnap up young chloroplasts from alga , the genes to asseverate them are already in the slug genome .
These ocean slugs are one of the only cognise example of functional gene transfer of training from one multicellular species to another . " When a successful transfer of factor between species occurs , evolution can basically happen from one coevals to the next,“Pierce total , rather than over yard of yr .
