This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A spinach leaf can turn light into chemical energy. A struggling heart cannot.
Researchers in China have brought part of the leaf's energy-making machinery into rat heart cells to test whether borrowed photosynthesis could help an overworked heart. Their spinach-derived nanoparticles, when combined with red light, improved pumping function and reduced tissue damage in rats with experimentally induced heart failure. The team, led by researchers at Union Hospital of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, reports the findings in the journal Small.
The findings suggest a possible new way to tackle heart failure's underlying energy deficit. As the researchers state, "The resulting nano-photosynthetic system functions as a 'biological battery' capable of controlled energy output via light stimulation." If successfully developed, the approach could become an experimental add-on treatment aimed at improving heart muscle energy shortages. Heart muscle needs a continuous supply of ATP, which is a molecule that powers cellular work.
Most of that supply comes from mitochondria, structures inside cells that convert energy from nutrients into a usable form. When mitochondria falter during heart failure, the energy shortage can exacerbate the muscle's dysfunction. Plants also make ATP using light.
The machinery for that reaction sits in membranes called thylakoids, which the researchers extracted from spinach and broke into nanoscale particles. To help the plant material enter heart cells, they wrapped it in membranes taken from heart muscle cells. In laboratory tests, cultured rat heart cells took up more of the coated particles than the uncoated ones.
When activated with red light, the treated cells showed higher ATP levels. In cells that were exposed to a substance that causes damage and abnormal enlargement, the illuminated particles also helped preserve mitochondrial structure and reduced the buildup of potentially damaging reactive molecules. The results suggest the borrowed machinery could support cells under stress.
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