An Injection of Symbiotic Cyanobacteria Gives Fish the Power of Photosynthesis (Sort Of)
Cyano-Zebrafish Embryo The fluorescent cyanobacteria can be seen in red. There are plenty of ways to cut down on your food intake -- you can observe the methods of fasting holy men, or perhaps toss back an appetite-suppressing hydrogel capsule -- but at last week's synthetic biology conference in Boston, one Harvard biologist presented a particularly novel idea: photosynthesis. It's not just for plants anymore. Harvard Medical School biologist Pamela Silver presented an interesting bit of research in which she injected fluorescently labeled cyanobacteria -- those microbes responsible for nearly 50 percent of Earth's photosynthesis and life as we know it -- into zebrafish embryos. Zebrafish are clear, making them good test candidates for this kind of research. And what the researchers observed was quite interesting: absolutely nothing. The fish tolerated the cyanobacteria very well, and both the fish and the bacteria thrived and grew -- you can see the cyanobacteria living...