![\"Light](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d41586-026-01559-9_52414988.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
A chloroplast (green) dotted with the membranous stacks called thylakoid grana (black blocks). Scientists have harnessed grana to induce photosynthesis in mammalian cells.Credit: Biophoto Associates\/Science Photo Library<\/p>\n
Photosynthetic machinery<\/a> can be harvested from spinach and transplanted into the eyes of mice, where it transforms light into molecules that carry energy and can tame inflammation1<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are stealing the entire technology that has evolved over millions of years in plants and are able to transplant it into the animal system,\u201d says David Tai Leong, a biologist at the National University of Singapore and co-author of the study.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is really cool,\u201d says Corey Allard, a cell biologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The findings, published today in Cell, suggest that plant-to-animal organelle swaps could lead to fresh biological insights as well as therapeutic applications.<\/p>\n \u201cAny effort to do this is necessarily going to look like a party trick at first,\u201d Allard adds. But only by trying the technique and finding out its limitations \u2014 such as how long the effects last and which cells can be targeted \u2014 can researchers work to build out the use cases, he adds.<\/p>\n Spinach smoothies<\/p>\n Kuoran Xing, a bionanotechnologist at the National University of Singapore, and his colleagues were inspired to explore the potential of cross-kingdom transplants by the ability of sea slugs to steal photosynthetic machinery<\/a> from algae.<\/p>\n To see whether mammalian cells might be able to pull off a similar feat, Xing first headed to the local supermarket, FairPrice, to buy a range of leafy greens. By blending, filtering and centrifuging these, he isolated the leaves\u2019 chloroplasts, the photosynthetic engines that transform light into energy. He then dunked the chloroplasts into a solution to expose their thylakoid grana, pancake-like stacks that harvest light to power the photosynthetic reactions.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d41586-026-01559-9_51141554.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n