There is an insect that can perform photosynthesis!
This plant-bug freak is called the pea aphid;
dismissed by farmers as pests, but a fascinating work of nature. Alain
Robichon of the Sophia Agrobiotech Institute in France recent conducted
a study on pea aphid. He reported that they use pigments called
carotenoids to harvest the sun’s energy and make ATP, a molecule that
acts as a store of chemical energy.
The aphids are among the
few animals that can perform photosynthesis. They can do this because of
the genes that they can steal from fungi through a physical and
chemical process called lateral transfer. Green aphids produce the most
ATP, orange aphids produce an intermediate amount, and white aphids
produce almost none.
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