6 ms·

Engineered photosynthesis demonstrated in animals in vivo via synthetic biology

128 points by sethbannon 4y ago

dr_dshiv 4y ago
Clearly the future of ethical vegetarianism.
- JunkEmu 4y ago
  Puts the green in soylent green
- recuter 4y ago
  The other kind of beyond meat. If we can pretend plants are meat we can pretend meat is plants goddamnit!
macrolime 4y ago
Can't wait for the first little green men (phosynthetic humans)
- gus_massa 4y ago
  There is a relevant analysis in https://what-if.xkcd.com/17/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/17/ about a "green" cow that can get energy from photosynthesis.
  - cobbzilla 4y ago
    > a "green" cow that can get energy from photosynthesis Sun-fed beef?
- dahfizz 4y ago
  I wonder how it will change the livestock industry. Not having to feed animals alleviates the environmental concerns about eating meat, and would make meat cheaper. Hell, I would buy myself some photosynthesizing cows and pigs if I can just put them in a pen outside and not have to feed them.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    Considering the surface area of a cow and that they apparently ought to eat 14+kg of grass a day plus a few kg of additional feed, a photosynthetic cow would quickly starve to death if you stopped feeding it... (ignoring the still necessary mineral intake)
    - jonathankoren 4y ago
      That’s not a fair comparison. This is generating ATP directly, rather extracting sugars and whatnot the plant, most of which is indigestible waste, so it’s not like you’d need the surface area of 14 kg of grass. The real problem is that you need hemispherical hairless cows. ;)
      - TeMPOraL 4y ago
        > The real problem is that you need hemispherical hairless cows. ;) That's a good opportunity to join forces with Sabine Hossenfelder and together move some of excess funding from, say, particle physics, and allocate it to fundamental research on which all physics depends: creation of frictionless, vacuum-rated spherical cows.
      - akiselev 4y ago
        ATP requires adenine and ribose. The former requires nitrogen fixed for the grass by microorganisms and the latter requires glucose for the pentose phosphate pathway. Adenine might also be recycled by the mitochondria which would further complicate things (can ATP be sent back into the mitochondria? Can the mitochondria recycle adenine without the entire glucose/electron transport pathway?) I suspect a photosynthetic cow would still need to eat a lot of grass
        moloch-hai 4y ago
        You process literal pounds of ADP to ATP and back to ADP, every day. If you eat fructose, you end up turning some of that into uric acid and excreting it, wastefully. It does other varied harm on its way out.
- k_sze 4y ago
  Reminds me of "Knights of Sidonia".
- zopa 4y ago
  No need to wait: per Gene Wolf they’re also time travelers. They’ll come to you.
  - clarionbell 4y ago
    Unless they overshoot, end up on Urth and have to wait for a guy with a spare whetstone.
sethbannon 4y ago
Worth noting that they were able to treat osteoarthritis in mice using transplanted mammalian cells engineered to photosynthesize. They also posit that this can be used to treat common degenerative diseases in humans by enhancing cell anabolism (the process by which cells utilize energy to build molecules and other things like proteins and lipids from smaller molecules). Though still much work to be done there.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
clnq 4y ago
This is very interesting. In a limited but substantial way, transplanting parts of the photosynthetic cell system could help with a lot of cell-centric metabolic deficiencies in people, from T1 diabetes to hypoxia in general. The delivery method seems to be cumbersome. But perhaps in the next decade we'll have CRISPR vectors that can deliver genetic information for organelles in a cell, and that could also help with rejection. Slightly related - this study reminds me of an Andy Weir short story Antihypoxiant - http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/antihypoxiant.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/antihypoxiant.html.
- mwcampbell 4y ago
  If you read that story all the way through, I think it's a good warning against applying "move fast and break things" to biotech.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    I have in my head, but have not written down, a sci fi story similar to that- "diybio" where some smart grad students clone cephalopod camoflague genes and make a crispr delivery system to give people the ability to grow moving tattoos that glow (go look at a cuttlefish). They go to burning man and give it away- massive night raves with people dancing around, etc. based on those good results, they go back to the lab and cook up a general purpose "edit your own genome for free!" project and put all the steps to reproduce it in a github repo. But... after half the world has downloaded and started playing, those burning man people start dying of cancer.
    - theGnuMe 4y ago
      Neat idea! You should write it up.
    - krageon 4y ago
      The answer is clear, time to edit more to get rid of the cancer :)
      - 4y ago
xeonmc 4y ago
MY LIFE FOR AIUR
patientplatypus 4y ago
Mistletoe 4y ago
For others that may be having similar thoughts, I’ve looked into this before and met this roadblock haha. It’s a great thought experiment for just how much energy a human uses and how much area we need for growing food in the world. > Our body’s demand for glucose is higher than photosynthesis can accommodate. Associate professor Lindsay Turnbull of the University of Oxford determined that if the surface area of an adult woman contained chlorophyll like a leaf, it would produce only 1% of the daily energy requirements for the person to survive. To live by photosynthesis alone, the woman would need a green body with the surface the size of a tennis court.
- drewm1980 4y ago
  So basically, she would have to be a tree.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Makes sense actually. Animals have had half a billion years: if photosynthesis could power them some of them would be using it.
  - russdill 4y ago
    The sloth actually supplements their diet with photosynthetic algae that live on their fur. But their metabolism is very very slow.
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      That would be equivalent to us carrying a lattice pot around and then eating the lattice. Not a real example of photosynthetic animals.
      - krageon 4y ago
        The solutions you describe are functionally identical, so I do not see why it wouldn't be a "real example".
  - 4y ago
e12e 4y ago
Reminds me of "Beggars in Spain"/Beggar's Ride trilogy by Nancy Kress.
1letterunixname 4y ago
I think if we had ways to transplant, repair, and/or supplant mitochondria, we might be able to restore function at an organelle level as opposed to MRT one-shot in vitro prior to gestation.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  There's a corner case where it is starting to happen. Women with mitochondrial disorders will pass them on to any children they have. Mitochondrial replacement therapy during IVF swaps most of the mitochondria with those from a donor. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7492815/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7492815/
mrlonglong 4y ago
I once read a sci fi story about how humans evolved to absorb energy via the skin due to some spliced in photosynthesis genes. Pretty cool I thought.

128 points by sethbannon 4y ago

dr_dshiv 4y ago

Clearly the future of ethical vegetarianism.

JunkEmu 4y ago
Puts the green in soylent green
recuter 4y ago
The other kind of beyond meat. If we can pretend plants are meat we can pretend meat is plants goddamnit!

macrolime 4y ago

Can't wait for the first little green men (phosynthetic humans)

gus_massa 4y ago
There is a relevant analysis in https://what-if.xkcd.com/17/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/17/ about a "green" cow that can get energy from photosynthesis.
- cobbzilla 4y ago
  > a "green" cow that can get energy from photosynthesis Sun-fed beef?
dahfizz 4y ago
I wonder how it will change the livestock industry. Not having to feed animals alleviates the environmental concerns about eating meat, and would make meat cheaper. Hell, I would buy myself some photosynthesizing cows and pigs if I can just put them in a pen outside and not have to feed them.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  Considering the surface area of a cow and that they apparently ought to eat 14+kg of grass a day plus a few kg of additional feed, a photosynthetic cow would quickly starve to death if you stopped feeding it... (ignoring the still necessary mineral intake)
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    That’s not a fair comparison. This is generating ATP directly, rather extracting sugars and whatnot the plant, most of which is indigestible waste, so it’s not like you’d need the surface area of 14 kg of grass. The real problem is that you need hemispherical hairless cows. ;)
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      > The real problem is that you need hemispherical hairless cows. ;) That's a good opportunity to join forces with Sabine Hossenfelder and together move some of excess funding from, say, particle physics, and allocate it to fundamental research on which all physics depends: creation of frictionless, vacuum-rated spherical cows.
    - akiselev 4y ago
      ATP requires adenine and ribose. The former requires nitrogen fixed for the grass by microorganisms and the latter requires glucose for the pentose phosphate pathway. Adenine might also be recycled by the mitochondria which would further complicate things (can ATP be sent back into the mitochondria? Can the mitochondria recycle adenine without the entire glucose/electron transport pathway?) I suspect a photosynthetic cow would still need to eat a lot of grass
      - moloch-hai 4y ago
        You process literal pounds of ADP to ATP and back to ADP, every day. If you eat fructose, you end up turning some of that into uric acid and excreting it, wastefully. It does other varied harm on its way out.
k_sze 4y ago
Reminds me of "Knights of Sidonia".
zopa 4y ago
No need to wait: per Gene Wolf they’re also time travelers. They’ll come to you.
- clarionbell 4y ago
  Unless they overshoot, end up on Urth and have to wait for a guy with a spare whetstone.

sethbannon 4y ago

Worth noting that they were able to treat osteoarthritis in mice using transplanted mammalian cells engineered to photosynthesize. They also posit that this can be used to treat common degenerative diseases in humans by enhancing cell anabolism (the process by which cells utilize energy to build molecules and other things like proteins and lipids from smaller molecules). Though still much work to be done there.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

clnq 4y ago

This is very interesting. In a limited but substantial way, transplanting parts of the photosynthetic cell system could help with a lot of cell-centric metabolic deficiencies in people, from T1 diabetes to hypoxia in general. The delivery method seems to be cumbersome. But perhaps in the next decade we'll have CRISPR vectors that can deliver genetic information for organelles in a cell, and that could also help with rejection. Slightly related - this study reminds me of an Andy Weir short story Antihypoxiant - http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/antihypoxiant.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/antihypoxiant.html.

mwcampbell 4y ago
If you read that story all the way through, I think it's a good warning against applying "move fast and break things" to biotech.
- dekhn 4y ago
  I have in my head, but have not written down, a sci fi story similar to that- "diybio" where some smart grad students clone cephalopod camoflague genes and make a crispr delivery system to give people the ability to grow moving tattoos that glow (go look at a cuttlefish). They go to burning man and give it away- massive night raves with people dancing around, etc. based on those good results, they go back to the lab and cook up a general purpose "edit your own genome for free!" project and put all the steps to reproduce it in a github repo. But... after half the world has downloaded and started playing, those burning man people start dying of cancer.
  - theGnuMe 4y ago
    Neat idea! You should write it up.
  - krageon 4y ago
    The answer is clear, time to edit more to get rid of the cancer :)
    - 4y ago

xeonmc 4y ago

MY LIFE FOR AIUR

patientplatypus 4y ago

Mistletoe 4y ago

For others that may be having similar thoughts, I’ve looked into this before and met this roadblock haha. It’s a great thought experiment for just how much energy a human uses and how much area we need for growing food in the world. > Our body’s demand for glucose is higher than photosynthesis can accommodate. Associate professor Lindsay Turnbull of the University of Oxford determined that if the surface area of an adult woman contained chlorophyll like a leaf, it would produce only 1% of the daily energy requirements for the person to survive. To live by photosynthesis alone, the woman would need a green body with the surface the size of a tennis court.

drewm1980 4y ago
So basically, she would have to be a tree.
edgyquant 4y ago
Makes sense actually. Animals have had half a billion years: if photosynthesis could power them some of them would be using it.
- russdill 4y ago
  The sloth actually supplements their diet with photosynthetic algae that live on their fur. But their metabolism is very very slow.
  - pvaldes 4y ago
    That would be equivalent to us carrying a lattice pot around and then eating the lattice. Not a real example of photosynthetic animals.
    - krageon 4y ago
      The solutions you describe are functionally identical, so I do not see why it wouldn't be a "real example".
- 4y ago

e12e 4y ago

Reminds me of "Beggars in Spain"/Beggar's Ride trilogy by Nancy Kress.

1letterunixname 4y ago

I think if we had ways to transplant, repair, and/or supplant mitochondria, we might be able to restore function at an organelle level as opposed to MRT one-shot in vitro prior to gestation.

maxerickson 4y ago
There's a corner case where it is starting to happen. Women with mitochondrial disorders will pass them on to any children they have. Mitochondrial replacement therapy during IVF swaps most of the mitochondria with those from a donor. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7492815/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7492815/

mrlonglong 4y ago

I once read a sci fi story about how humans evolved to absorb energy via the skin due to some spliced in photosynthesis genes. Pretty cool I thought.