[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="261" caption="GFAJ-1 thriving in arsenic"]
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Just today researchers funded by NASA discovered bacteria in Mono Lake, California that not only survives in a toxic environment but also incorporates it into their biochemical makeup. Normally the foundations of life are molecules made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus. But GFAJ-1, a unique strain of bacteria, found a way to substitute phosphorus with the usually fatal arsenic in its DNA, RNA and even the energy-carrying molecules like NADH and ATP (in the bacteria's case ATA).
The high levels of arsenic, high salinity and high alkalinity makes Mono Lake a prime region to explore for the team's search for bacteria that can survive in extreme conditions.
This strain of bacteria demonstrates other ways life can form on Earth and even in outer space. It also expands our own definition of life forms. Could there be extra-terrestrials we may have missed because they don't contain phosphorus? It's amazing how a microscopic organism can cause this epic paradigm shift.
You should also check out the video that's in the source!
Source
[...] Just today researchers funded by NASA discovered bacteria in Mono Lake , California that not only survives in a toxic environment but also incorporates it into their biochemical makeup. Normally the foundations of life are molecules made …Continue [...]
ReplyDeleteI heard about this the other day. I think that it is interesting that DNA, and therefore life, can exist in ways other than our own. All those sci-fi books have been talking about silicon-based life for years, it's about time somebody went out looking for something different. Hopefully this will open up the idea of existence of life on other planets.
ReplyDeleteThis was very fascinating to read especially since these bacteria use arsenic, suicide inhibitor, for phosphorous. the possibility that his has opened is quite interesting and further study of the bacteria should yield some promising results as to what encodes for these bacteria to allow them to use arsenic.
ReplyDeletejust for fun (and some alternate views) check out these websites/blogs.
ReplyDeletehttp://scienceblogs.com/webeasties/2010/12/guest_post_arsenate-based_dna.php
and
http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html
In both posts (one from a chemists point of view and the other a microbiologist), please note the emphasis on the lack of appropriate controls that might FALSIFY the conclusions in the original paper.
Thanks for those links professor! Now I've learned to take everything with an open but pragmatic mind. Despite the journal being peer-reviewed I'm surprised that no one has commented on the discrepancy other than the authors of the blogs. I guess everyone just got too excited and didn't delve too much into the methods of how they determined the DNA backbone was arsenic based or not. I don't understand why they didn't just take a GC/MS just to be perfectly sure. Perhaps this warrants a second, more in-depth study.
ReplyDelete