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Photosynthesizing Sea Slugs Steal Genes From Algae
An anonymous reader writes For decades, scientists have puzzled over how a certain sea slug acquires the ability to photosynthesize after ingesting algae. An advanced imaging technique now confirms that the slugs are literally stealing genes from the algae. It's considered the first example of horizontal gene transfer in a multicellular organism.
Holy crap, they're GMO! I demand they be labeled as such right now!
> It's considered the first example of horizontal gene transfer in a multicellular organism.
Now that we know horizontal gene transfer happens in nature, that should lay to rest any arguments that GMOs are unsafe, after all it is exactly the same thing just man-made in a lab where it can be tested.
They're Democrats!
... it's copyright infringement.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
But I know many multicellular intelligent organisms that have engaged in horizontal gene transfer. Many of them probably shouldn't have.
Silence is a state of mime.
This has been known for years. I even remember watching a nature doco back in the 90s which went into detail about the creatures.
Note: all WH40K cosplayers better suit up...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Sounds like some sort of euphemism...
So this is how they got the ability to produce Adam.
Here's my cock and balls when i am alone: 8==>
But here is my cock and balls when yo mama is around! 8======================>
Any questions? At all? Fuck the lameness filter, this is fuckin yo moms we're talkin about! There oughta be exceptions for that I tells ya. Damn fucking nigger ass lameness filter of biatch-hood.
I may be too optimistic but this could become a really nice laboratory tool once the exact mechanism of genetic transfer is known and replicated, gene cloning independent from plasmid or simplified transfection would be very useful for genetic engineering. Imagine easily cultured cells that not only can accept various genetic materials but actively incorporate them into their genome, "gene cloning for dummies" kits for one-step protein expression.
How does that make sense? So if they ate a pig they would turn into a pig-slug? Likely not, I am assuming, then why not just be born with the photosynthesis genes instead of the exact gene needed to copy them and only them from plants? I have heard of similar animals who ingested plankton, and then held the plankton in special translucent "stomachs" that leched the energy out as it was being photosynthesized. Sounds far easier than this method.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I'm a 58 year old programmer, my mother will love to have you over for dinner. She's 28 years older than me. When can she expect you for "that special date"?
I forgot to ask you, do you prefer her teeth in or out? And do you prefer privacy? 'cause she shares a room with a former nun at the nursing home.
The slugs at some point in their past acquired the genes from algae that are required to maintain/repair the chloroplasts that each one collects from the algae they eat. The horizontal gene transfer is (presumably) not an ongoing process but something that happened in their distant past.
The baby slugs start eating algae and they digest most of them but they save the chloroplasts from the algae cells and integrate them into their own tissue. Once they accumulate enough of them they basically become solar powered and don't need to eat anymore.
Normally the chloroplasts would not survive very long without an algae around them to take care of them, but this is where the genes that the slug has that originally came from the algae come into play. The slug is thus able to provide the things that its adopted chloroplasts need to survive for many months.
Definitely very cool.
G.
If the reporter thinks it's the first example of horizontal gene transfer then they should go and study molecular biology. It's not even the first example of an animal stealing genes from another kingdom! The bacteria-originated genes were even found in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - a model organism in biology.
A creationist could argue that (apparent) gene transfer means evolution provides no consistent predictions. If things change suddenly or traits hop between category branches, then evolutionists can simply claim "gene transfer". If they change gradually, then they claim traditional natural selection.
Of course there is more to the net evidence, but the prediction-ability argument is weakened by gene hopping since it can be invoked to "explain away" a wide range of different observations.
A natural world that provides a wide variety of characteristic transfer options becomes less distinguishable from engineered changes. No camera was there to actually catch the gene hops or mutations in the act. We can only verify that they moved or changed after the fact. Nature is surprisingly flexible.
Table-ized A.I.
My mother was killed by a photosynthesizing slug, you insensitive clod!
If eating McShit food and pizzas all day.
If only we could make that work for humans.
Primal Zerg!!!!
I was taught this in my college Marine Biology classes in the late 1980s.
How has it taken this long for it to be discovered again? Were the 1990s the dark ages?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Only one question remains: Which one first, Cyclone Trap or Insect Swarm?
It makes me wonder if lateral (horizontal) gene transfer across species is/was much more common than we currently think it is.
For these current findings, photosynthesis is a fairly easy phenotype to observe (it doesn't require a lot of advanced tools to know it is there). So to show that it occurred, someone would likely do a search across both genomes. If they find a match, then their hypothesis has a positive test. Fortunately they did get a match with enough statistical confidence to show that the genes' matched, but I bet it wasn't an exact match and it was probably aided from other known sequence-to-gene mappings. The problem applying this more generally is that over, many, many generations mutation can make the outcome of a gene match less confident, and thus hard to find.
Say someone tries to do a search for possible lateral (horizontal) bacterial genes in the human genome, for bacteria genes that evolved after we forked away from our "common ancestor." What would be the likelihood that they would find a match? --it would, however, require that we have sequenced these ancestral genomes that may not exist anymore, or are very hard to physical locate. I somewhat doubt we have this data, as the required quantity we would need would be too vast.
For example, our current state is that, cell to cell (not body mass to collective mass), we are made up of more bacteria than human. And, each human has a very unique set of bacterial species in them (more unique than a fingerprint). That is way too many species to have know the genomes and topological relationships with all humans.
So, say we do have genes from bacterial genes seeping into our gene pool. (1) They would be very difficult to gene match to know for sure, and (2) maybe this explains why people react differently to medications? Or why have a wide range of different disease predictors/risks.