If you think this is not the case - you are wrong. It seems that the insult in the form: "You are a vegetable" takes on a special shade in the light of this material. There are several types of slugs that have chlorophyll in their bodies and are able to create food from sunlight.
Chlorophyll in these slugs is absent at birth. It is acquired by organisms over time. It does this by eating a lot of plants. Only eating here looks a little different. Instead of traditional digestion, the resulting chlorophyll is used by slugs as part of their cells. And some slugs are even capable of horizontally transferring algae DNA into their bodies. Well, then it's a matter of technology. You just need to sit in the sun and wait for a surge of energy:)
So what are they called? Reading …
Elysia chlorotica is a species of small slug belonging to the marine gastropod molluscs. This is the first animal known to scientists, capable, like plants, of carrying out the process of photosynthesis. He does not have his own chloroplasts, so he uses the chloroplasts of the seaweed Vaucheria litorea, which he eats, to carry out photosynthesis. The slug's genome encodes some of the proteins that chloroplasts need for photosynthesis.
Adults of Elysia chlorotica are usually bright green due to the presence of Vaucheria litorea in chloroplast cells. Sometimes sea slugs are found in reddish or grayish shades, it is believed that this depends on the amount of chlorophyll in the cells. Young individuals that have not yet consumed algae are brown with red spots due to the absence of chloroplasts. Sea slugs have large lateral parapodia resembling a mantle that can fold around their bodies. Sometimes they reach 60 mm in length, but their average size is 20–30 mm.
Elysia chlorotica is found along the Atlantic coasts of the United States and Canada. The sea slug lives in salt bogs, creeks and shallow bays at a depth of 0.5 meters.
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The slug Elysia chlorotica feeds on the algae Vaucheria litorea. It pierces the cell membrane with its radula and sucks out its contents. The slug digests almost all the contents of the cell, but the algae leaves the chloroplasts intact, assimilating them into their own cells. The accumulation of chloroplasts by the slug begins immediately after the metamorphosis of the larva into the adult, when it switches to feeding on algae.
Young slugs are brown in color with red spots, algae nutrition turns them green - this is caused by the gradual distribution of chloroplasts along a very branched digestive tract. At first, young slugs continuously feed on algae, but over time, chloroplasts accumulate, allowing the slug to remain green even without eating Vaucheria litorea. Moreover, the process of photosynthesis is turned on, and the slug switches to a "plant" way of life, feeding on solar energy.
The chloroplasts assimilated by Elysia chlorotica carry out photosynthesis, which allows the slug - during the period when algae is not available - to live for many months on glucose obtained as a result of photosynthesis.
Chloroplasts in slug cells are viable and function for nine to ten months (which is much longer than possible / Alex). But chloroplast DNA encodes only 10% of the proteins they need. In plants, chloroplasts - intracellular organelles - many proteins are obtained from the cytoplasm of the cell, these proteins are encoded by the nuclear genome of the plant cell. It was hypothesized that the genome of Elysia chlorotica should also have genes for photosynthesis. In the genome of the slug, a gene homologous to the nuclear gene of algae psbO, encoding a protein of photosystem II, was found. It has been hypothesized that this gene was obtained by a slug as a result of horizontal gene transfer. Possibly, the nuclear genome of Elysia chlorotica also contains other genes encoding proteins involved in photosynthesis.
Adults of Elysia chlorotica are synchronous hermaphrodites - each sexually mature animal produces both sperm and eggs. Self-fertilization is not common in this species, and cross-mating usually occurs. After the eggs are fertilized, the sea slug sticks them together into long strands.
The life cycle of a sea slug lasts nine to ten months, and all adults die annually and synchronously after laying their eggs. Scientists have found that this "programmed death phenomenon" is due to the activity of a virus living in the cells of Elysia chlorotica.
