Biology 2581B Lecture 24: Lecture 24 - Some of “My Favourite Things”
28 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
Elysia chlorotica are also known as solar powered opisthobranches. These slugs kidnap their chloroplast by slurping them from the algae they eat. Once they slurp up the algae when they are young, they have the genes to maintain it. For the rest of their lives, all they have to do is sunbathe. Specifically, elysia have 101 chloroplast-encoded gene sequences and 52 nuclear-encoded genes from the chloroplast donor, vaucheria. As a result, this allows the symbiotic chloroplast to be translationally active: in other words, functional algal genes have been transferred to the slug genome. The symbiotic chloroplast residing inside the host molluscan cell are maintained by an interaction of both organellar and host biochemistry directed by the presence of transferred genes. Trypanosomes are parasites which live in insects and mammals, and are the carriers of sleeping sickness. The insects gain the trypanosomes from taking a blood meal from an infected mammal.
