Functional Gene Transfer: How A Sea Slug Came To Photosynthesize Like A Plant
Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - 17:40
in Biology & Nature
A brilliant-green sea slug can live for months at a time "feeding" on sunlight like a plant and now scientists have the first direct evidence that its chromosomes have some genes that come from the algae it eats. Those genes help sustain photosynthetic processes inside the slug that provide it with all the food it needs. Importantly, this is one of the only known examples of functional gene transfer from one multicellular species to another, which is the goal of gene therapy to correct genetically based diseases in humans. read more