Very Cool Science Article of the Week

That’s right, I was too lazy to find a number of articles this week, but the awesomeness of this article should make up for it.  Apparently, there’s a sea slug out there that can sort of conduct photosynthesis – well, at least for 9 months.

Scientific American elaborates: 

Usually, plants perform photosynthesis by way of tiny organelles called plastids. Plastids convert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into usable nutrients. Then animals eat the plants. But the sea slug goes about it slightly differently.

It has at least one gene necessary for photosynthesis—so far it’s the only animal known with this ability. But it needs some help, the gene itself isn’t enough. So sea slugs eat algae. They slit open the organisms and suck out the cytoplasm. The slugs digest most of the algae, but those plastids remain whole and undigested. And then the plastids keep on doing what they do, which is convert sunlight to usable energy. Once the sea slug has eaten enough algae, and gained enough plastids, it can live off just sunlight for up to nine months. When it comes to energy, this slug needs no plug.

We can now posit a new mechanism for how Popeye got so much extra strength from eating spinach.  He just kept the chloroplasts around and used them to give him extra energy!  This, however, does not explain why Popeye doesn’t turn green (I’m working on that part).