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Unicellular "Enigma" Changes From Predator To Plant and Back

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-don't-eat-greens,-food-eats-greens dept.

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."

4 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. What happens when chloroplasts are removed? by az-saguaro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Biology is full of promoter-inhibitor relationships, and this seems like an interesting one. When the algae is inside the protist, the host's "animal" behaviors and anatomy are suppressed, but they clearly remain in a latent state, ready to reactivate after fission. It makes one wonder to what extent chloroplasts remain as endosymbionts versus organelles in genuine plant species. So . . .
    . . .
    Does anyone know of any research where chloroplasts were removed from plant cells in culture, to see if the remaining cells revert to some atavistic animal-like exogenous-food-seeking state?

    1. Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed? by az-saguaro · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes, you are exactly correct, that sticking chloroplasts into animal cells would be the necessary flip side of that experiment.
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      I was not referring to turning pine trees into Night of the Living Dead. What would be interesting is to see what would happen to algae under these circumstances, or to cultures of moss cells or flowering plant cells. Pick a popular research plant - tobacco for instance - and then pull the chloroplasts out of a few cells, then stick them into a cell culture medium - e.g. agar petri dishes or mammalian cell culture flasks - and see if they become planktonic, aggressive, nutrient-tropic, or if they start to express cell surface structures or other organelles related to sensing and locomotion. Since the algae are phylogenetically much closer to all of this, it seems plausible that they might revert to animal-like forms and function.
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      If nobody has ever done these experiments, now would be a good time.

  2. Re:PETA will be confused by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually once this cell totally integrates this endosymbiotic lifeform (the next step) it might very well become eukaryotic. Ironically that would make it an eukaryotic plant, which would presumably very easily evolve back into a predator.

    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."

    The explanation is simple : cell division in the parent organism does not trigger cell division in the endosymbiotic lifeform. That endosymbiotic lifeform might very well be thought of as an infection.

  3. Re:PETA will be confused by rpillala · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No, not the same rights as humans, just the same rights as pets. Even this is an oversimplification but I think it gets the point across.

    The point being that it is not appropriate to speak of animals having all the same rights as humans. I think this is well understood. The right to vote, for example, does not make sense since it presupposes knowledge of language, politics, issues etc. The rights that PETA members ascribe to animals, most basically, are the rights not to suffer and die at the hands of humans. These aren't that far out, when you consider the "arguments" in favor of the suffering and dying.

    --
    When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."