Solar charged sea slugs create breakthrough in search for everlasting green energy according to a study by Rutgers University-New Brunswick and other scientists. Debashish Bhattacharya, senior author of the study and distinguished professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers-New Brunswick said that it is indeed a stupendous achievement because it is extremely atypical for an animal to behave like a plant and remain alive only on photosynthesis. He also said that the wider inference is in the field of simulated photosynthesis.
That is if one is successful in untangling the mystery of stealing of the slug inaccessible plastids to fasten carbon without the plant nucleus, then one could henceforth utilize inaccessible plastids forever as green machines to generate bio products or energy. The prevailing prototype is that to create green energy, one requires the plant or alga to operate the photosynthetic organelle, but the slug portrays that this need not be the case.
The sea slug Elysia chlorotica, a mollusk that can develop to a length of 2 inches has been discovered in intertidal zone between Nova Scotia, Canada, and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as well as in Florida. Juvenile sea slugs consume the nontoxic brown alga Vaucheria litorea and become photosynthetic after pilfering millions of algal plastids, which resemble miniature solar panels and hoarding them in their gut lining according to the study published online in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Source : swiftnary
