thebrianbeale

There is probably no one left on this topic, but I could not resist correcting some people. Carbon monoxide binds to haemoglobin more strongly than oxygen, it does not break it down. Chloroplast is an organelle, not a tissue, and thus there would be no tissue rejection. Plants cannot move in the way that animals can because they don't have muscles or brains; they don't have the energy to support them. Mitochondria are used for the respiration of glucose, other sugars, fats, starch, and protein. Mitochondria are an essential part of nearly all cells, this is why there are no cells with chloroplast and not a mitochondrion. Mitochondria break down things that the chloroplasts create in order to use the energy. If you were to integrate chloroplasts, you wouldn't just inject them. Chloroplasts have been shown to form symbiosis with cells in the digestive systems of some sea slugs from the algae that they eat, but the kleptoplasts only have a life span of about 10 months. This would mean that hypothetical therapies would need to be administered regularly. A better approach would be to insert the DNA coding for the chloroplast and other proteins necessary for photosynthesis into the animals DNA. This would cause the animal cells to produce the chloroplasts themselves, and form automatic and permanent symbiosis. The only problem I think is the length of the relevant DNA strand and the problems normally associated with integrating new DNA into complex cells.