I believe this project is intended to be more of a 'design fiction' than a functioning photosynthetic material (RCA is well known for this type of work). Of course free organelles that aren't maintained by the cellular machinery will rapidly cease to function. They will maintain their green color but won't be able to perform membrane/macromolecule repair, gradient regulation, signaling, foreign body defense, etc.

This is still a useful project however as it may serve to catalyze future research into robust photosynthetic materials.

Yeah... this isn't new at all... it's a concept design, it doesn't actually function. Last time I saw this it was blown out of proportion in /r/futurology and people had to damage control to explain to people it wasn't actually science...

Do you know anyone working on this 'for real'? Synthetic biologists so to speak. I've looked into this before to no avail.

Not familiar with the lab personally but this is probably close to the state of the art right now. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl903141j

Did someone in the video squeeze leafs in order to extract chlorophyll or something? It sounds crazy to destroy leaves in order to build artificial leaves..

Next artificial meat. Simply grind some beef and mold into a patty.

There were a few projects on this, from the same school. For one, James King's artificial meat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmqHnBp8odg

Sounds like a very cool project. Any idea where we can find more info on it? Specifically, it would be interesting to learn where does the freed Carbon go: this topic is not covered in images and the little text that is available on the site. Also (or perhaps related to it) what's the longevity of the leaf and what does it require for photosynthesis to run (regular leafs require at least water and removal or generated organic material)

Url changed from http://www.sciencedump.com/content/first-man-made-biological..., which points to this.