Boston Globe: The photosynthetic zebra fish, sort of. It IS green and carries chloroplasts’ kin.
The Boston Globe‘s Carolyn Y. Johnson got wind via PLoS ONE of a strange experiment over at Harvard, where an investigation of symbiosis and of photosynthesis led to production of zebra fish riddled with photosynthsizing cyanobacteria. The little critters – the green ones – didn’t seem to do much harm to the fish even though they had invaded much of system including the brain.
It’s just a short piece, with a spritely tone. One longer term aim is to see whether an animal like this might not only be made to carry photosynthesizing guest throughout its tissues, but to get some of its nourishment from the sugars and other carbohydrates they would generate.
By the way, as one learns on reading more, that ghostly green color in the picture of the modified zebra fish is not there because of the cyanobacteria innoculate. Turns out, under the kind of microscope used to take the picture, normal zebra fish tissue is what fluoresces green. The little fluorescent red dots, including in the brain and eye, are concentrations of the solar-energy-powered bacteria. The picture caption with Johnson’s story should have said as much.
For a longer and more detailed account, check out the long blog post that the grad student who did most of the work put on the web:
- Oscillator (blog) Christina Agapakis: (Photo)Synthetic Endosymbiosis ; Hmmm. Very interesting. But, uh, is there oversight and review to gauge the chance such work might lead to a breed of cyanobacteria that would happily invade human cells? Might that be dangerous? Might that be the ultimate sunblock – soaks up the sunlight in your outer dermis AND feeds you (and turns you green). Who knows what that might be. The group, it says here, is already seeing how things go in mouse cells. That is worth checking out.
Grist for the Mill: PLoS ONE article Towards a Synthetic Chloroplast ;
- Charlie Petit
April 23rd, 2011 at 9:34 am
Madness! This should be a fish? Looks like a worm
How can interact an animal like with a plant? This is similar to deep sea fish or? And what happened during evening sunlight days or longer without rainy?
April 23rd, 2011 at 10:46 am
looks like a mutate worm
April 24th, 2011 at 6:37 pm
It’s a larval zebrafish. In time it will look like a proper fish with fins and all.
April 25th, 2011 at 10:59 am
I think it looks like a worm too.
April 25th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
Without meaning to spoil the silly-comments party, I offer:
Quirks & Quarks recently reported a non-experimental situation in which algal cells (not cyanobacteria as in this case) invade vertebrate cells: in the eggs of salamanders. Scroll down to “Green Eggs and Salamanders.”
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/episode/2011/04/09/april-9-2011/