Plant-animal hybrid cells make solar-powered tissues, organs or meat or photosynthesis in animals

Amazing stuff! Onto planimal cells!

"Scientists in Japan have created hybrid plant-animal cells, essentially making animal cells that can gain energy from sunlight like plants. The breakthrough could have major benefits for growing organs and tissues for transplant, or lab-grown meat. ...

In a new study ... the team inserted chloroplasts into animal cells, and found that they continued to perform photosynthetic functions for at least two days. The chloroplasts were sourced from red algae, while the animal cells were cultured from hamsters. ...

When the team shone a specific type of laser light on the cells, they quickly saw chlorophyll – and by extension, chloroplasts – inside the hamster cells. Using another technique called pulse amplitude modulation fluorometry, they confirmed that the chloroplasts were still performing photosynthesis. ...

Intriguingly, the team also noticed that the hamster cells grew faster than usual while they were cultured alongside chloroplasts. ..."

"Energy-making chloroplasts from algae have been inserted into hamster cells, enabling the cells to photosynthesize light ...

The team is continuing its research on creating “planimal” cells that can provide the beneficial features of plants to animals. In this study, it found that animal cells which contained chloroplasts experienced an increased cell growth rate, suggesting that the chloroplasts provided a carbon source (fuel) for the host cells. ..."

From the abstract:

"Chloroplasts are photosynthetic organelles that evolved through the endosymbiosis between cyanobacteria-like symbionts and hosts. Many studies have attempted to isolate intact chloroplasts to analyze their morphological characteristics and photosynthetic activity. Although several studies introduced isolated chloroplasts into the cells of different species, their photosynthetic activities have not been confirmed. In this study, we isolated photosynthetically active chloroplasts from the primitive red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae and incorporated them in cultured mammalian cells via co-cultivation. The incorporated chloroplasts retained their thylakoid structure in intracellular vesicles and were maintained in the cytoplasm, surrounded by the mitochondria near the nucleus. Moreover, the incorporated chloroplasts maintained electron transport activity of photosystem II in cultured mammalian cells for at least 2 days after the incorporation. Our top-down synthetic biology-based approach may serve as a foundation for creating artificially photosynthetic animal cells."

Plant-animal hybrid cells make solar-powered tissues, organs or meat

Solar-powered animal cells Researchers combine chloroplasts from algae with hamster cells (original news release)

Incorporation of photosynthetically active algal chloroplasts in cultured mammalian cells towards photosynthesis in animals (open access)

Superresolution fluorescence microscopy image. This fluorescence image shows chloroplasts (magenta colored) successfully incorporated into the hamster cells, with other features of the animal cell also highlighted (nuclei in light blue and organelles in yellow-green).