Also, these sea slugs utilize kleptoplasty—taking chloroplasts from their food and incorporating them into their cells where photosynthesis can be used—which may help them survive until they regrow enough body to function normally, although it is still a mystery how they can survive in this state…
I'm at the American Malacological Society meeting in LA this week. So far it's been an amazing conference! We started with a workshop on kleptoplasty and it's just kept going from there. #Invertebrate
Very cunning! If humans could practice kleptoplasty, alcoholics would only need to eat liver to regenerate their own.
Elysia crispata, the lettuce sea slug! Not a nudibranch but a sacoglossan. This sea slug does something called kleptoplasty, or chloroplast symbiosis. The chloroplasts from the algae they eat is sequestered into their digestive tract and parapodia, letting them go long periods without food!
Human kleptoplasty when
Please fund my "kleptoplasty with CRISPR" project and we can all have chloroplasts!!!
Kleptoplasty 🏆🏆🏆 Thank you, Gabriel!
Narishkeit: a Yiddish loanword meaning "foolishness" Kleptoplasty: the life habit of stealing chloroplasts from algae and using them for photosynthesis (as seen in the adorable "leaf sheep" sea slug) Cattywampus: askew, misaligned, or disorderly
Kleptoplasty 🤯