FINALLY! NASA to Hold News Conference Astrobiology Discovery

[Archael]

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/r ... 0-110.html

[Kaijyuu]

Oookay? I'm curious as to what they discovered, but I doubt it'll be anything big. No spaceships hovering around the solar system or anything.

[Archael]

[Havermayer]

Nasa has a tendency to overhype these things.  I can't blame them.  Still, it will be worth checking out.

[GeneralStrife]

Oookay? I'm curious as to what they discovered, but I doubt it'll be anything big. No spaceships hovering around the solar system or anything.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Hey sexy

[philsov]

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/fea ... mical.html

I think this is it.

spoiler

NASA-funded astrobiology research has changed the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth.

Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.

"The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it."

This finding of an alternative biochemistry makeup will alter biology textbooks and expand the scope of the search for life beyond Earth. The research is published in this week's edition of Science Express.

Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the six basic building blocks of all known forms of life on Earth. Phosphorus is part of the chemical backbone of DNA and RNA, the structures that carry genetic instructions for life, and is considered an essential element for all living cells.

Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.

"We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new -- building parts of itself out of arsenic," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team's lead scientist. "If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven't seen yet?"

The newly discovered microbe, strain GFAJ-1, is a member of a common group of bacteria, the Gammaproteobacteria. In the laboratory, the researchers successfully grew microbes from the lake on a diet that was very lean on phosphorus, but included generous helpings of arsenic. When researchers removed the phosphorus and replaced it with arsenic the microbes continued to grow. Subsequent analyses indicated that the arsenic was being used to produce the building blocks of new GFAJ-1 cells.

The key issue the researchers investigated was when the microbe was grown on arsenic did the arsenic actually became incorporated into the organisms' vital biochemical machinery, such as DNA, proteins and the cell membranes. A variety of sophisticated laboratory techniques was used to determine where the arsenic was incorporated.

The team chose to explore Mono Lake because of its unusual chemistry, especially its high salinity, high alkalinity, and high levels of arsenic. This chemistry is in part a result of Mono Lake's isolation from its sources of fresh water for 50 years.

The results of this study will inform ongoing research in many areas, including the study of Earth's evolution, organic chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, disease mitigation and Earth system research. These findings also will open up new frontiers in microbiology and other areas of research.

"The idea of alternative biochemistries for life is common in science fiction," said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Until now a life form using arsenic as a building block was only theoretical, but now we know such life exists in Mono Lake."

The research team included scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Penn., and the Stanford Synchroton Radiation Lightsource in Menlo Park, Calif.

NASA's Astrobiology Program in Washington contributed funding for the research through its Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program and the NASA Astrobiology Institute. NASA's Astrobiology Program supports research into the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life on Earth.

First off, it's kind of a letdown because this took place in california.  Second, it's really really awesome to see that chemical substitution at this level of things can work and thus alternate elements can be used in order to create life.

[StarScythe]

Great a bacteria thats actually made of poison... just what the world needs. Lets hope the common cold doest adapt this, cause then were all screwed.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

This is pretty awesome.

[Gotwald]

Great a bacteria thats actually made of poison... just what the world needs. Lets hope the common cold doest adapt this, cause then were all screwed.

The common cold is a virus, and unless it infects these specific bacteria (which it shouldn't as it is not a bacteriophage) the common cold will remain exactly the same.


I think this is awesome news. More biochemical pathways and development tools will meant that life can exist in more complex forms that we thought and more extravagant and strange places. Hooray for science!

[Cheetah]

This is pretty classic NASA epic failness. Because it sounds really lame and boring, even though it fundamentally changes our concepts about the known fundamental building blocks of life. Nerds are just destined to fail at life.

[StarScythe]

hmm... i dont know... 40% of study cold cases cant even identify the cause of the cold, and there are about 100 different strains of rhinovirus that are known to cause the cold.

If I were an evil genius terrorist, id be trying to find a way to adapt the common cold virus' to develop this, which could be possible simply because the common cold (virus' associated with) are some of the most adaptable organisms on the planet. If anything can do it, then they can.

Think about it, something as contagious as the common cold, only now if you catch it, you die, cause as it replicates itself in your body its killing you too.

[Kaijyuu]

It's not like the cold can replicate arsenic. It'd have to gain it from its surrounding environment... and if the surrounding environment is *you*....

[Gotwald]

Unless you are eating appleseeds by the truck load (which contain arsenic, and the amount of arsenic would kill you even without the bacteria), Kaijyuu is absolutly right. The virus could not replicate properly, and would simply turn back into the common cold.

A better use would be to make a virus which uses arsenic and attacks arsenic bacteria, in the even of some crazy outbreak of bacterial population.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

So does this bacteria substitute arsenic for phosphorus - meaning it can use either one - or does it replace phosphorus with arsenic - meaning it needs arsenic, and no longer uses phosphorus?

If it can substitute one for the other, then I wonder if this flexibility could be transferred to higher organisms?  Once we run out of oil, we'll use coal - which we have 250 years supply of, I think - and coal usually has lots of other nasty stuff in it, like mercury and arsenic.  But if we could incorporate arsenic into our biology, then we could adapt to a more polluted world, and maybe to other planets some day.

How exactly do lead and mercury kill us?  Could the same be done with them?

[Gotwald]

Presumably from this article the bacteria could sub arsenic for phosphorus, although it doesn't say if they tested this bacteria in an all phosphorus and no arsenic environment.

The biggest problem with making larger creatures with this trait is that arsenic is toxic; the microbes can freely parse the arsenic across their membrane to get it in. Humans would have to ingest the arsenic and transfer it throughout the body. Along with arsenic being heavier and having different properties than phosphorus, but if any are of the body came into contact with the arsenic that couldn't withstand it, it would not work. We'd also have to get blood to be able to carry arsenic with no negative effects. So this idea, while fanciful, probably will never happen.

As for lead and mercury, I forget exactly what they do, but I know that the damage your nervous system pretty bad, which maaaaakkkkkeeesssss yooooouuuuuu sssssllllloooooowwwwwwww. Remember kids, don't suck on the mercury thermometer.