Scientists just made mouse eyes photosynthesize, blurring plant/animal kingdoms #SyntheticBiology

The plant-animal divide that organized biology since Aristotle proved permeable inside a mammalian retina. Researchers harvested chloroplasts from spinach and transplanted them into mouse photoreceptor cells; exposed to light, the organelles produced ATP and NADPH - the energy currencies cells run on - for several days inside living animal tissue.

Photoreceptors are among the most metabolically expensive cells in the mammalian body, and inherited retinal dystrophies often trace back to energy failure in exactly those cells. A chloroplast drawing on the light the eye is already collecting is a structural answer to that constraint. The demonstration is in mice, function lasts days rather than weeks, and clinical deployment is years away. What the paper established is that the boundary is permeable, and the engineering question now has a new shape: how long can a transplanted chloroplast sustain function inside mammalian tissue?

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#Chloroplasts #Scientists #CellBiology #AI #Biology #Biotech #Mammalian

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