[hxrts]

I believe this project is intended to be more of a 'design fiction' than a functioning photosynthetic material (RCA is well known for this type of work). Of course free organelles that aren't maintained by the cellular machinery will rapidly cease to function. They will maintain their green color but won't be able to perform membrane/macromolecule repair, gradient regulation, signaling, foreign body defense, etc.

This is still a useful project however as it may serve to catalyze future research into robust photosynthetic materials.

[r109]

Yeah... this isn't new at all... it's a concept design, it doesn't actually function. Last time I saw this it was blown out of proportion in /r/futurology and people had to damage control to explain to people it wasn't actually science...

[whistlerbrk]

Do you know anyone working on this 'for real'? Synthetic biologists so to speak. I've looked into this before to no avail.

[hxrts]

Not familiar with the lab personally but this is probably close to the state of the art right now. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl903141j