How a sea slug ate some algae and turned into a plant

Where can I sign up for some algae?!

Mary Rumpho of the University of Maine has discovered how the sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, runs on solar power. The slug does it with photosynthesis! Remember high school biology teaching you that only plants can convert solar radiation to energy? Well, Elysia chlorotica, very much an animal, does it as well, by harnessing the genes from algae that it eats -- a phenomenon known as kleptoplasty -- stealing genes. By just eating algae for two weeks, the sea slug can live out the rest of its life without ever eating again -- which is only one year. Totally cool! Now where's my algae?

For more on the life of the solar-powered sea slug, go here. And for the abstract of the science paper published by Rumpho and colleagues, see PNAS. (Full article is not available, because, mostly, the scientific community is saddled with a dictatorial publishing system that denies knowledge to the public that funds science.)