Green human beings without the need for food and agriculture - How realistic are genetically engineered posthumans relying on photosynthesis?

Would we have to stand in dirt all day, get covered in animal shit and not move?

No, no, we can move around all we want.

I saw a programme not so long ago that showed how chloroplasts can live independantly of the host cell and visa-versa, so the thinking was that they both must have existed at some point and evolved independant of one another and then for some reason coalesced symbioticaly.

From this point of view, I see no reason why an animal cell couldn’t do the same (though I’m no biologist by any stretch of the imagination).

@mattbrowne what about the animal shit?

Um, in space there is no sunlight.

@Marina what makes you say that? How do you think the sun’s light gets to us if not through space?

You mean like Poison Ivy from Batman?

Well, certainly not in the next ten years. First and foremost we’d have to map the whole human genome AND plant genome to understand what genes regulate photosyntesis in plants and what regulate our chemical demands, then we’d have to come up with a way to tweak the human genome so that the plant genes can work in the ambient of the human body… which is FAR more difficult than it looks.

@Marina Are you serious? The sun IS in space. As a matter of fact there is far more sunlight in space since earth’s atmosphere reflects some of it…

@RareDenver But it is not in spaceships.

Miracle grow tastes pretty nasty, But being solar powered means we would have to spend some time sunbathing—Nekkid to maximize the process—so we might all have to work 2nd and 3rd shift and first shift would become the new third shift. Those folks would have to use grow lamps.

That would make all space suits look like Barbarella’s?

@Marina
I take you mean deep, deep, deep, deep, deep space, like middle distance between two stars.

@Marina Glass exists for a reason, you know? And besides what’s the problem? Halogen lamps have been around for quite some time, you know?

@Marina Windows? Sunbeds?

I think that having chlorophyll as our source of energy would fundamentally change us. We would no longer be human.

Just a different race. Greenies.

@Marina What does “being human” entail? What characteristics needs one have to “be human”? Who the hell cares if we aren’t human anymore?

No animal shit. Enriched savory water.

Space is full of photons feeding chloroplasts. Artificial light would also be easier to carry around than fries and steaks when traveling to Mars. Yes, the idea is about posthumans. I’m not promoting anything here. Just exploring an idea. Most posthuman ideas involve humans merging with technology.

Why are we looking to colonise other planets when we can’t even live peacably together on this one anyway?

total waste of time and money if you ask me, time and money we could be spending making this planet a richer more peacful place to live.

@Pazza Sure, i don’t see how this is relevant but, yeah, you’re right…

I still like the Barbarella idea.

Interesting idea @mattbrowne . I was wondering if it is only green plants that contain chloroplasts. Don’t plants like Copper Beech contain them also? And if so – we wouldn’t necessarily need to be green.

The idea could serve some good on this planet too. It appears a lot of the world hunger problem could be solved in the equatorial regions. Probably using nano-tech, the tiny machines could make energy to run an Ethiopian.

@majorrich – haha, I just had a picture in my head of a little Ethiopian running at a high rate of knots just in front of the energiser bunny shouting “eat my dust bunny!”

@mattbrowne
I suppose its ethical if you as a person want these changes and agree to them. But then if its a genetic alteration, this may have different ramifications to children.

@majorrich – Replicating nano-tech? What about the kids of your Ethiopian? If chlorophyll is part of the posthuman genome all our kids are green too. DNA is a very powerful replication mechanism.

I’m sure by that time we could crank out nanos, or have them self replicate for installation. Jut brainstorming here.

I don’t see a problem with ethics, in genral, but in this particular case i see it even less. We constantly alter our genome with each generation, why would it be bad to alter it in a proficuous way for once? IMO the next step in human achievement should be the methodical, progressive elimination of genetic disorders such as huntington’s, parkinson’s and the like, afterall it wouldn’t be so difficult to screen for them oncethe human genome diversity is mapped.

And no this isn’t a slippery slope, there’s a difference between saying “i don’t ike black people” and saying “i don’t want my son to slowly die of asphyxiation because a genetic disorder has caused him to lose all control on his muscles”: One is a subjective preference based on prejudice and the other is picking between being sane and suffering from an objectively nefarious condition

(Sorry if i wrote about ethics right now, i didn’t notice that lat part)

@lloydbird – Actually, it’s not my idea. I’m merely exploring it. I read this article

http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_6.html#dalrymple

by David Dalyrmple, who is an 18-year-old Ph.D. student at MIT. He’s speculating about modifying humans to photosynthesize directly.

Yes, chloroplasts are found in other eukaryotic organisms as well, not only plants. They are considered to have originated as endosymbiotic cyanobacteria (previously known as blue-green algae), see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroplast#Evolutionary_origin

A population of shrek lookalikeys…..ewww, I don’t fancy yours much.

Interesting idea. Assuming we were able to successfully implant chloroplasts into humans, I would think the next challenge would be getting CO2 to the chloroplasts for photosynthesis to occur. Plants use stomata to regulate gas exchange and provide chloroplasts with the CO2 they need. Currently, CO2 is a waste product of respiration for humans, so there would be a source of CO2, but a method of getting that CO2 to the chloroplasts would be necessary (I’m assuming that the chloroplasts would be in the outermost layers of the skin in order to receive light energy).

If a method could be devised, this could be beneficial, because oxygen is a by-product of photosynthesis. This additional source of oxygen may lessen the need for oxygen storage on the spaceship.

@ucme
You could mask the chlorophyll with other pigments. Why do you think leaves turn brown/red in autumn?

http://www.futurestates.tv/episodes/mister-green

Does anyone think this could provide the amount of energy needed for an active warm blooded mammal?

I don’t buy it.

@RareDenver Pretty unlikely, yep. But a really interesting idea.

@RareDenver – Not during the night.