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Unicellular "Enigma" Changes From Predator To Plant and Back
SilverEar writes "Imagine a creature that swims and preys on others, but once it eats a certain kind of plant, that plant grows inside it, causing the predator to lose its ability to prey and start using sunlight to make its food. Its preying mouth is replaced by an eye that is needed to find sunlight. This is the Hatena ('enigma' in Japanese). The kicker: when Hatena reproduces, one offspring is a peaceful photosynthesizer with the sun-seeking eye, while the other is yet again a predator with a voracious mouth."
Definitely an interesting result. The original article is published in Science. A free abstract can be found here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps_sinensis , albeit multicellular, is also somewhat astonishing
For all those interested, Scientific American has the story.
Doesn't happen -- they're endosymbionts. Without chloroplasts/mitochondria regular plant/animal cells can't function -- no electron transport chain. That's why people with mitochondrial myopathy are sick, as their mitochondria don't work properly so they don't make enough ATP.
The chloroplasts/mitochondria have outsourced amino acid production (among other things), so without the host, they can't survive.
"Hatena" doesn't really mean "enigma". It's actually an interjection, and a more accurate translation would be something like "Weird!" or "Oh man!".
Plants w/o chloroplasts. I remember something from biology where they keep some corn alive that is hybrid for a critical gene--if missing the chloroplasts don't divide. If self-crossed, one-fourth of the corn is albino and dies as soon as it runs out of stored energy in the seed.
However, see Indian Pipe for a plant that doesn't have chloroplasts.
It's a bacteria with a parasite that radically alters the host's "body" chemistry, and one of the daughter cells will inherit the parasite. And I presume that daughter cell will spawn a similar pair at the next mitosis division. I see no changing of species here.