Question to Biologists

Even if you could get it to work, it wouldn't really be useful because the amount of energy generated would be pathetic.

Lets assume the photosynthesis has an ideal efficiency of 10% of solar energy that hits it (realistically it would be more like 1%). On average the sun gives about 120 watts per square meter per hour during daylight. Average surface area of an adult human is 1.9 meters square over 24 hours. Lets be generous and say that you're naked and your entire body is in sunlight, somehow. That's 1.9*120 for the watts over 24 hours (228 watts), so with our 10 percent efficiency we get 22.8 watts of energy in a whole day.

That's less than 6 calories. You can get that much energy at once by eating a single stick of celery. Or just eat a Snickers bar and get 10 times as much energy

>>9065927
>per hour

that should have been "Per 24 hours" not per hour

>>9065927
like this anon said, the energy would be tiny. there's a reason plants dont have locomotion, it requires an enormous amount of ATP.

The slugs can't photosynthesize. The chloroplast they eat do for a short time, but eventually degrade. Maintaining chloroplast requires nuclear genes and products of those genes.

Also, as someone already pointed out, you get almost no energy. Remember that there are two cycles. The part that is absorbing light does not make sugar. The part that does make sugar requires a ridiculous amount of the enzyme (rubisco) because it's such horribly inefficient enzyme. Easily over half the dry weight of most leaves is going to be rubisco.

Overall humans wouldn't benefit from it unless we seriously modified our skin issues, probably detrimentally, and stayed outside all day. Even then we wouldn't get the energy we need because plants are sedentary and don't need much energy to sit there.

>>9065927
>t. not a physicist
228 watts for 24 hours is
228 x 24 x 3600 = 19.7MJ = 4.7Kcal

>>9065950
or lower with whatever % efficiency

>>9065950
that's still only 4.7 "food calories" though

>>9065955
>>9065950
>K
M
someone'll get it right eventually
4700 food cals, 470 at 0%

>>9065961
10% I blame my keyboard

>>9065961
you just switched K for M? is it Kcal or Mcal?
470 food calories just seems high i dunno. We should assume the same efficiency as plants i guess, which is 3-6%, heterotrophes are 10%

File: agro.gif (39KB, 640x389px) Image search: [Google]

39KB, 640x389px

>>9065875
if anyone is still here yes its "possible", as is almost anything else with genetics these days.

But our understanding/economic efficiency in genetic manipulation is analogous computers in the 50s/60s

We have most of the basics down, and are starting to industrialize them, but we're still decades away from implementing traits into other species willy nilly.

For example I currently am working on making chloroplast genetic transmoations more efficient. Its only been done a handful of times via a gene gun, as entering a plant cell nucleous is a totally different story than a plastid.

But this is a good subject to pursue... in fact your post has given me some much needed inspiration.

You see, plant cell transformations, including ones utilizing the famous CRSPR mechanism are largely done via agrobacterium, which posses a mechanism to insert desired genes into the cell. We do not totally understand how it works step by step, but we do know we can insert our GOI by replacing the natural TG section with whatever we choose.

That being said, I'm currently working for the only person who has ever genetically modified a chloroplast, and we need a new method for an industrial scale.

Figuring out how this slug incorporates algae (bassically chloroplasts) and communicates with them symbiotically could shed insight on how to transfer our desired GOIs into the plastid.

Cheers

>>9065992
i dont know too much plant genetics, do chloroplasts have specific glycoproteins or glycolipids on their membrane? you could potentially try to engineer a virus with the agrobacterium tumefasciens (sp?) sequence containing your GOI with a lysogenic sequence, but i dont know anything about the genome size necessary for that.
Are you in a university lab?
Have you ever personally used a gene gun? Frankly if the gene gun works, i would do that, probably the easiest solution.

im really just speculating on all of that though. If a virus that targeted chloroplasts was found though, that would be good news for you

>>9065974
19.7MJ = 4.7Mcal = 4700kcal (food calories)
That's available energy from sunlight.
With 3% reaction efficiency, say 10% effective surface area capturing sunlight, get 14.1kcal/day.
>>9065875
Apart from light energy not being enough to power a whole animal there might also be problems with CO2 toxicity.
We breathe out CO2 from respiration reaction to get rid of it because it's toxic. If we kept it stored in concentrations high enough for efficient photosynthesis it'd probably kill us.

>>9066018
>14.1kcal/day
ok that's way more reasonable, although you're accounting for there being sun during night i think.

>>9066001
The virus idea is something we are looking into, as well as transport from nucleus via Golgi and vacuoles.

We've had success with the gene gun and the foundation of our business model, but natually as a startup we want something more cost effective.

>>9066055
so to follow up any mechanisms these slugs have to communicate with the algae would be of interest to us, "tools in the toolbox" if you will.

>>9066055
oh shit you're a startup, im super jealous, do you have a PhD or what are you credentials?
> as well as transport from nucleus via Golgi and vacuoles.
that's a really good idea too, again i dont know too much about plants but i assume there are certain vesicle markers to the chloroplast? but how would you transport DNA through a vesicle, i didnt think vesicular transport would work on a lysogenic piece of DNA containing a GOI. or are you only interested in the GOI product being translocated to the chloroplast? Man im super interested in this stuff but obviously i know you cant reveal too much. BUT WHAT GENE??!?!

>>9066057
gotcha, im looking up those slugs now

>>9066057
from what i just read, it doesnt seem they communicate with them at all, it's more like a "cows eating rocks" thing, they just eat them and dont digest them, profiting off their photosynthetic activity