| Can This Sea Snail Help Humans Photosynthesize? |
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| Written by Heather McKee | |
| Tuesday, 01 April 2008 | |
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Though not usually an advocate for biotechnology, I have always been sort of obsessed with the sci-fi idea of humans with photosynthetic capabilities. The ability to create our own food, our own personal energy - directly from the sun - could solve many social and environmental issues. Unfortunately, photosynthesizing humans are not as simple as a skin-covering chlorophyll tattoo. Human hemoglobin does interestingly, superficially resemble chlorophyll, but our bodies do not have the complimentary cellular organelles to be able to fully process the products of chlorophyll - even if we could get it under our skin.
But, as I found out this week, intertidal nudibranchs (frilly, shell-less coastal snails) can photosynthesize. And you can photosynthesize too, if you’re willing to cover your skin with some of these guys.
Soyman, an Uzbekistani nonprofit started by a group of expatriate American surgeons and engineers, has just published a study showing that intertidal nudibranchs can be harnessed as energy sources for humans. Nudibranchs eat creatures called zooxanthellae, which eat algae. Zooxanthellae evolved the ability to retain the entire cellular complexes responsible for photosynthesis from the algae they ate. The nudibranchs can do the same with the zooxanthellae.
We're not evolved enough to be able to just eat snails and be photosynthetic.
But the surgeons and engineers at Soyman propose that skin grafts of these particularly gaudy nudibranchs on humans will allow them to extract energy from the functioning chloroplast complexes – and, despite threatened PETA interference, they are currently looking for volunteers in sunny locations to test their hypothesis.
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