The work is “the first step in more complex modes of engineering artificial photosynthesis,” told the news outlet Magdalena Rose Osburn, a geobiologist at Northwestern University who was not involved in the research.
”It is extraordinary,” added Felipe Santiago-Tirado, a fungal cell biologist at the University of Notre Dame. “To some extent, it’s like turning an animal into a plant.” Anthony Burnetti, a geneticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Georgia Tech evolutionary biologist William Ratcliff achieved this breakthrough by focusing on a protein known as rhodopsin used by bacteria, some protists, marine algae, and even algal viruses to convert light into usable energy. in a petri dish. However, the team’s first effort did not work as the rhodopsin protein made by the gene went to the wrong compartment.
But not everyone is a fan of the experiment. “I think the authors overemphasize the evolutionary significance of their work,”Robert Blankenship, an emeritus biochemist at Washington University in St. Louis. “This is an artificial construct and is not the product of natural evolution.” Burnetti has an answer to this criticism stating he would now like to target mitochondria as well. “Even though it seems to have never happened in nature, we definitely plan to eventually put rhodopsin into the mitochondrion.”