NASA Discovers bacteria which uses Arsenic

[lilyannerose]

NASA Discovers bacteria which uses Arsenic in Mono Lake

If anything this different were to be found it would be in Mono Lake. Mono Lake always made me feel like I was no longer on planet Earth!

Edited on Thu Dec-02-10 11:09 AM by Ian David


Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything.

At their conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. 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.

But not this one. This one is completely different. Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While she and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth.

No details have been disclosed about the origin or nature of this new life form. We will know more today at 2pm EST but, while this life hasn't been found in another planet, this discovery does indeed change everything we know about biology. I don't know about you but I've not been so excited about a bacteria since my STD tests came back clean. And that's without counting yesterday's announcement on the discovery of a massive number of red dwarf stars, which may harbor trillion of Earths.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/dis...02x4638937

Read more: http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life

---

http://www.thelivingmoon.com/43ancients/..._Lake.html

Stunning photos of Mono Lake for those unfamiliar with the Lake.

[downbeatplumb]

Thats both interesting and disappointing I was hoping for ET.


But wait

This means that life started on earth at least twice, which means it isnt quite as hard as previously thought.

How long will it take the literal creationists to shoe horn this into their dogma I wonder

[Anomalocaris]

Seems like multiple abiogenesis.

[Jaysyn]

Dr. Wolfe-Simons website.

(She's kinda cute too! )

[downbeatplumb]

Seems like multiple abiogenesis.

Beat you by about a second

[lilyannerose]

Thats both interesting and disappointing I was hoping for ET.


But wait

This means that life started on earth at least twice, which means it isnt quite as hard as previously thought.

How long will it take the literal creationists to shoe horn this into their dogma I wonder

I was sort of hoping for ET myself!

---

Regarding the abiogenesis comments, I don't have a science background, could you expand a bit on it? I would appreciate!

[Lethe]

Interesting, I'm looking forward to hearing more, though I can't say I was expected a new type of life on Earth with "NASA" in the title.

[orogenicman]

I don't think this is an issue of multiple abiogenesis at all. All this means is that a bacterium living in an extreme environment has evolved to an extreme environment (albeit one that was rich in arsenic and poor in phosphorus). So, for instance, no one is proposing (certainly not based on any data I know of) that these bacteria first formed back in the primordial soup during Earth's early beginnings. What these results have shown is that some bacteria are capable of replacing phosphorus with arsenic, an ability which not only affects their DNA makeup, but also their ability to manufacture certain necessary energy compounds, such as ATP. Apparently, they were able to adapt by producing a different energy molecule that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus. I eagerly await results from others to see if these findings hold up, and to see what details are filled in.

[Paul the Human]

The reason this is important to NASA is that it greatly expands the possibility of life existing 'elsewhere', like Titan or Europa, perhaps. That is an exciting possibility! It changes the concept of 'life as we know it' to a fascinating extent, because it means that lifeforms may very well exist in environments that were previously considered unfit for life. It makes me wish I could live long enough to learn what we'll find out there someday.

[HeyItsZeus]

The reason this is important to NASA is that it greatly expands the possibility of life existing 'elsewhere', like Titan or Europa, perhaps. That is an exciting possibility! It changes the concept of 'life as we know it' to a fascinating extent, because it means that lifeforms may very well exist in environments that were previously considered unfit for life. It makes me wish I could live long enough to learn what we'll find out there someday.

I actually wrote an essay on this exact thing for school once (and people thought I was crazy)