Part animal, part plant, bright green, and totally bizarre: Meet the sea slug Elysia chlorotica.
Biologists already knew that this organism, native to the marshes of New England and Canada, was a thief that somehow pickpocketed genes from the algae it eats. At last week’s meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, researcher Sidney Pierce said he has found that the slugs aren’t just kleptomaniacs—they use the pilfered genes not only to make chlorophyll, but also to execute photosynthesis and live like a plant. Said Pierce: “They can make their energy-containing molecules without having to eat anything,”Pierce said. “This is the first time that multicellular animals have been able to produce chlorophyll” [LiveScience].
The slug steals in a different way than most organisms (usually bacteria) that employ horizontal gene transfer to incorporate the DNA of others. Most of those hosts tuck in the partner cells whole ...
