Comments on: Solar-powered green sea slug steals ability to photosynthesise from algae

By: Solar salamanders have algae in their cells | Not Exactly Rocket Science | swimmingpoolpumps.co.za

Wed, 04 May 2011 17:57:54 +0000

[...] spotted salamander isn’t the only animal to form partnerships with algae. The emerald green sea slug steals the genes and photosynthetic factories from a type of algae that it eats. Coral reefs are [...]

By: Solar salamanders have algae in their cells | Not Exactly Rocket Science

Solar salamanders have algae in their cells | Not Exactly Rocket Science — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:42:16 +0000

[...] spotted salamander isn’t the only animal to form partnerships with algae. The emerald green sea slug steals the genes and [...]

By: Solar

Solar — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:02:06 +0000

Wow, that’s really interesting stuff. I had no idea sea slugs could do that. It’s almost kind of creepy

By: Solar Power

Solar Power — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:12:30 +0000

Thanks for this wonderful post.

By: tai haku

tai haku — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:46:37 +0000

I've featured E. crispata (which as noted does a similar thing) a couple of times on my tuesday nudi slot: http://tai-haku.blogspot.com/2007/02/tuesday-nudi.html http://tai-haku.blogspot.com/2008/07/tuesday-nudi.html Elysia are very cool slugs.

By: Edgar

Edgar — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:08:08 +0000

Wow….and this adaptation isn

By: SteveMassey

SteveMassey — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:01:54 +0000

Look closely at the northern blot for Elysia. This is typical of northern blots conducted at low stringency – the hybridization is NON-SPECIFIC. look at the signal to noise ratio on the Elysia lane – its terrible. why is this not seen on the Vaucheria lane? if I were to use a probe from a gene from say potato, and use this against human total RNA at low stringency, this is what I would get (eg 42oC, as described in the methods). this would not be evidence that human DNA contains genes from potato. the banding likely corresponds to rRNA and is essentially background.
sorry

By: Lilian Nattel

Lilian Nattel — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:22:27 +0000

I’m not a biologist (I write novels!) but this gave me shivers. Beautiful.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:04:29 +0000

Actually, the paper says there’s Northen blot evidence.

By: SteveMassey

SteveMassey — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:42:08 +0000

Sadly guys, there is no Southern blot evidence for this ‘gene transfer’. I’m afraid this looks more like a case of PCR contamination……………… much like a recent similar paper published in the journal symbiosis by Pierce et al., which also did not have southern blot data.
how can the gene be there without a southern blot?????????
Don’t believe everything you read, even in PNAS……!