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Animal can make its own chlorophyll, a new study shows
SEATTLE - It's easy being green for a sea slug that has stolen enough genes to become the first animal shown to make chlorophyll like a plant.
Shaped like a leaf itself, the slug, Elysia chlorotica, has a reputation for kidnapping photosynthesizing organelles and some genes from algae. Now it turns out that the slug has acquired enough stolen goods to create an entire plant chemicalproducing pathway in an animal body, says Sidney K. Pierce of the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Slugs of this species can manufacture the most common form of chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants that captures energy from sunlight, Pierce reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. In experiments in the lab, Pierce used a radioactive tracer to show that the slugs were making the pigment, called chlorophyll a, themselves and not simply relying on chlorophyll reserves stolen from the algae.
"This could be a fusion of a plant and an animal - thaf s just cool," said invertebrate zoologist John Zardus...