Photosynthetic Fish and Other Oddities
Photosynthetic humans–endowed with the power to derive energy from the sun–are a popular construct of science fiction. But Pamela Silver, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, aims to push that concept into reality.
Silver’s research focuses on cyanobacteria, a microbe responsible for almost 50 percent of the earth’s photosynthetic ability. Her team aims to harness the organisms’ photosynthetic powers by engineering them to generate fuel and other valuable chemicals.
But Silver is also experimenting with a more fantastical use for the microbes. In a recent experiment, researchers injected fluorescently labeled cyanobacteria into zebrafish embryos, a species commonly used in research. The fish are transparent, making them easy to observe during development. Much to Silver’s surprise, the fish survived and grew, as did the fluorescent microbes living inside their cells. “When we put E. coli into fish, they blew up, but they are extremely tolerant of cynabacteria,” Silver said at a synthetic biology conference in Boston last week, where she presented the research. Right now, the system doesn’t make enough energy to maintain the fish, but the researchers are experimenting with different engineering approaches to enhance production.
The video below shows Zebrafish embryos (green) that have been injected with photosynthetic cyanobacteria (red).
The ability to run on sunlight would certainly be a handy superpower. But what if you still like to eat? James Liao, a biologist at UCLA, has developed a new strategy to enhance cells’ ability to burn fat by adding a metabolic pathway from bacteria and plants. (For more details, see Making Fat Disappear.) “Female mice show a huge decrease in diet-induced obesity, and they accumulate much less fat,” said Liao at the conference. Results for male mice are less dramatic, though it’s not clear why.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language
For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.
The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it
Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.
Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?
An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death
Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.