Please read the article and answer the following questions
Elysia chloroticais a bizarre-looking creature that lives in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North America.
It is a green, leaf-shaped sea slug. Mary Rumpho-Kennedy, a professor at the University of
Maine,studiedthis odd creature and discovered that E. chloroticaacquires chloroplasts from the algae that it
consumes. These chloroplasts are stored in the cells that line the slug’s gut, allowing the slug to live off of
the photosynthetic products of the chloroplasts and not eat for extended periods of time.
Questions:
1) Why might chloroplasts be able to live outside of their host algal cells for extended periods of time in the
gut of E.chlorotica?
2) Most organelles that are endosymbiotic in origin are no longer capable of living outside of their host
because they lack all of the genes necessary for autonomous life. Where are they getting these gene
products from when living inside their host cells?
3)What might be true about the genome of E. chlorotica that allows it to maintain algal chloroplasts inside
its body?