“NASA has discovered a new life form, a bacteria called GFAJ-1 that is unlike anything currently living in planet Earth. It’s capable of using arsenic to build its DNA, RNA, proteins, and cell membranes. This changes everything.
NASA is saying that this is “life as we do not know it”. The reason is that all life on Earth is made of six components: Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.
That was true until today. In a surprising revelation, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon and her team have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today, working differently than the rest of the organisms in the planet. Instead of using phosphorus, the newly discovered microorganism—called GFAJ-1 and found in Mono Lake, California—uses the poisonous arsenic for its building blocks. Arsenic is an element poisonous to every other living creature in the planet except for a few specialized microscopic creatures.
According to Wolfe Simon, they knew that “some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we’ve found is a microbe doing something new—building parts of itself out of arsenic.” The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding organisms in other planets that don’t have to be like planet Earth. Like NASA’s Ed Weiler says: “The definition of life has just expanded.”"
Read more at Gizmodo (Thanks @HorzaGobachul)
I would love a source on this
So does this imply that life on earth emerged at least twice? If the DNA of these microbes is that alien to ours, isn’t that the conclusion?
More proof scientists really have no clue…
All they know is what they see. It’s like living life with blinders on.
The other interesting aspect is that this creature uses arsenic to replace the phosphorus in it’s DNA when it is in an environment that is completely free of phosphorus, suggesting that it is an archaic ability from a previous epoch when the Earth’s environmental chemistry was significantly different.
It ‘prefers’ to use phosphorus but will use arsenic for the same role if necessary. It is an intra-generational adaptation, suggesting that life is not only more widespread than we thought, but it is also significantly more adaptable and responds extremely rapidly if necessary.
This is not to say that we could do the same, but that the basic origins of life (single-celled organisms) may survive not only harsh environments but also rapid changes. Life will survive.
It is out there!
Fascinating!
P.s Huge fan, looking forward to more great shows
The source is NASA. No, life did not arise twice, but responds to the predominant environmental chemistry of it’s environment. If you read the findings, you see that there is still some debate about it all. This organism usually uses phosphorus like all else- however it is capable of using arsenic instead. AND- scientists use their lack of complete understanding to spur new findings, not as blinkers.
Maybe we should not get too carried away. An alternative take on this so called ‘discovery’ | http://bit.ly/egUT7l
yeah, chris, i see what ya mean. altho mono lake is a very strange place!
Well said, Rob. At closer look this is not as earth-shattering as the headlines imply.
Here’s a link to a longer debunking article.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arsenic-based_life.php
It’s the terribly illogical conclusions that are drawn as a result of finding something new like this. Because they have never seen it before, then that must mean… ( insert conclusion here).
Thanks for the additional article link.
Chris, you are right. The hyperbole always outstrips the facts. I love biology so I found it very exciting, but not quite ET. Still, as I said, it is a new level of adaptation for extremophiles that I personally hadn’t heard of before. That is, if their calculations are correct and it is genuinely substituting As for P in its DNA.
cutbacks must be bad, NASA reduced to exploring California instead of space.
Sorry, but I still think that this is pretty big news. The discovery is that it might be possible for a life form to build DNA etc. with Arsenic as a substitute to Phosphorus. This was not believed possible before, and that has potentially huge implications.
Yes, more tests need to be done to determine if indeed the Arsenic was functioning as a replacement for Phosphorus, but since the Arsenic was found to be at the expected levels with the removal of Phosphates, it’s a pretty good bet. Certainly worthy of a press conference.
To downplay this by saying it was found on Earth, and that the microbes were put under specific conditions to encourage this, doesn’t make sense to me. The fact is, it’s possible, and that’s what’s huge. If it’s possible here, it could be possible elsewhere.
“Sorry, but I still think that this is pretty big news. The discovery is that it might be possible for a life form to build DNA etc. with Arsenic as a substitute to Phosphorus. This was not believed possible before, and that has potentially huge implications.”
So we learn something new about the adaptability of life’s chemistry. That is quite a big deal but I don’t see the huge ramifications. More a case of special adaptability
This link;
http://xkcd.com/829/
Didn’t make it past moderation when I posted it yesterday. Is there a policy on just posting links without accompanying comment? It couldn’t be the content.
Msg From Abeo: Yea Apologies, Spam filter picked it up.