Japanese team fuses alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae into hamster cells, producing hybrid cells

A Japanese team reported on Nov. 13 that it created the first hybrid plant-animal cells, called "planimal" cells, by fusing the unicellular alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae into cultured animal cells, according to adnkronos.com, citing Jiji Press. adnkronos.comadnkronos.comadnkronos.comOpen source ↗ The researchers come from the University of Tokyo, the Institute of Science Tokyo, Kindai University and other institutions. The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

How the hybrid cells were made

The animal cells were derived from Chinese hamster ovaries, which are used to produce drugs and other products. C. merolae is primitive and has no cell wall, and its genome is very small. The team fused the alga into the animal cells using a conventional method with polyethylene glycol, in order to put the alga's DNA into the animal cell nucleus.

The success rate was low. Even so, the researchers obtained planimal cells in which all of the alga's DNA was integrated into the animal cells' chromosomes. Sachihiro Matsunaga, professor at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, has worked on planimal cells since he proposed such a hybrid in 2018.

Animal function, silenced alga genes

In terms of function, the hybrids were animal cells. The integrated alga DNA was frozen by methylation, a mechanism that acts as an "off" switch for gene expression, and the chloroplasts, which conduct photosynthesis, were degraded during fusion. adnkronos.comadnkronos.comadnkronos.comOpen source ↗ Like ordinary cultured animal cells, the planimal cells continued to divide and multiply for more than 150 generations.

"We hope to introduce chloroplasts and activate C. merolae genes to generate oxygen through photosynthesis," Matsunaga said. The report adds that if cells producing useful animal and plant proteins could be cultured in large quantities using photosynthesis, this could provide a new means of producing drugs and cultured meat.