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 Smitington
Unidentified Flying Object
Registered: 08/10/09
Posts: 1,408
Loc: Mushroom Kingdom
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 NASA Finds New Life 
#13574387 - 12/02/10 06:54 PM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life
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. Updated.
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.
NASA Finds New Life (Updated)The new life forms up close, at five micrometers.
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."
[flash=,]http://[/flash]
NASA Finds New Life (Updated) Here's the organism and a computer simulation on how it substitutes phosphorous for arsenic in its DNA
Talking at the NASA conference, Wolfe Simon said that the important thing here is that this breaks our ideas on how life can be created and grow, pointing out that scientists will now be looking for new types of organisms and metabolism that not only uses arsenic, but other elements as well. She says that she's working on a few possibilities herself.
NASA's geobiologist Pamela Conrad thinks that the discovery is huge and "phenomenal," comparing it to the Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise crew finds Horta, a silicon-based alien life form that can't be detected with tricorders because it wasn't carbon-based. It's like saying that we may be looking for new life in the wrong places with the wrong methods. Indeed, NASA tweeted that this discovery "will change how we search for life elsewhere in the Universe."
NASA Finds New Life (Updated)Mono Lake, California. Image by Sathish J — Creative Commons
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 a trillion Earths, dramatically increasing our chances of finding extraterrestrial life.
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Smitington
Unidentified Flying Object
Registered: 08/10/09
Posts: 1,408
Loc: Mushroom Kingdom
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This is an amazing discovery. Opens up a lot of possibilities for discovering more life on Earth, and especially elsewhere.
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ben_dover0802
shroom addict
Registered: 09/22/08
Posts: 642
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This is pretty exciting. I saw this on my universities front page today. Very cool!
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Maverick
Lover of Earwigs!
Registered: 12/18/05
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I live a 4 hours north of Mono. :o
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ChuangTzu
starvingphysicist
Registered: 09/04/02
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: Maverick] 1
#13575984 - 12/03/10 02:40 AM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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Annom
※※※※※※
Registered: 12/22/02
Posts: 6,331
Loc: Europe
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: ChuangTzu] 1
#13576362 - 12/03/10 05:13 AM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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Log in to view attachment
There you go.
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ChuangTzu
starvingphysicist
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: Annom]
#13576374 - 12/03/10 05:24 AM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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Danke.
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Baby_Hitler
Anarcho-Technologist
Registered: 03/06/02
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Didn't we already find bacteria that use sulfur instead of oxygen, like, a long time ago?
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ChuangTzu
starvingphysicist
Registered: 09/04/02
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Quote:
Baby_Hitler said:
Didn't we already find bacteria that use sulfur instead of oxygen, like, a long time ago?
That's not even nearly as cool because the oxygen/sulfur of respiration is just an electron acceptor and is expired from the body.
In this case an entire building block is being replaced. The arsenic completely or nearly completely replaces phosphorous in all parts of the cell: DNA, proteins, liposomes, and there is even an arsenic analogue of ATP.
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 cc2
Mush
Registered: 05/15/10
Posts: 2,089
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: ChuangTzu]
#13584512 - 12/05/10 06:59 AM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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As-based life!  trippier than the now overtheorized Si-based life!
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trendal
point of inflection
Registered: 04/17/01
Posts: 19,182
Loc: Ontario, Canada
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: ChuangTzu]
#13585561 - 12/05/10 02:19 PM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
ChuangTzu said:
Quote:
Baby_Hitler said:
Didn't we already find bacteria that use sulfur instead of oxygen, like, a long time ago?
That's not even nearly as cool because the oxygen/sulfur of respiration is just an electron acceptor and is expired from the body.
In this case an entire building block is being replaced. The arsenic completely or nearly completely replaces phosphorous in all parts of the cell: DNA, proteins, liposomes, and there is even an arsenic analogue of ATP.
This story isn't really that interesting...
The "new" life that they "found" was actually some bacteria that they had forced to use arsenic instead of phosphorous. They took bacteria from lakes with high arsenic concentrations, then grew them in phosphorous-deprived conditions with lots of arsenic present instead.
It doesn't surprise me that arsenic would replace phosphorous...they're both in the same column of the periodic table - right above/below each other, actually. They share many of the same qualities. Most, actually...the only thing they differ on is weight (which will, of course, effect bonding).
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You're here because you know something.
What you know you can't explain,
But you feel it;
You've felt it your entire life.
That there's something wrong with the world.
You don't know what it is, but it's there....
Like a splinter in your mind...
Driving you mad.
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Distorted Vision
Don't waste life friends
Registered: 07/30/09
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: trendal]
#13585677 - 12/05/10 03:18 PM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
trendal said:
Quote:
ChuangTzu said:
Quote:
Baby_Hitler said:
Didn't we already find bacteria that use sulfur instead of oxygen, like, a long time ago?
That's not even nearly as cool because the oxygen/sulfur of respiration is just an electron acceptor and is expired from the body.
In this case an entire building block is being replaced. The arsenic completely or nearly completely replaces phosphorous in all parts of the cell: DNA, proteins, liposomes, and there is even an arsenic analogue of ATP.
This story isn't really that interesting...
The "new" life that they "found" was actually some bacteria that they had forced to use arsenic instead of phosphorous. They took bacteria from lakes with high arsenic concentrations, then grew them in phosphorous-deprived conditions with lots of arsenic present instead.
It doesn't surprise me that arsenic would replace phosphorous...they're both in the same column of the periodic table - right above/below each other, actually. They share many of the same qualities. Most, actually...the only thing they differ on is weight (which will, of course, effect bonding).
i think someones mad bc they didnt discover it themselves. 
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ChuangTzu
starvingphysicist
Registered: 09/04/02
Posts: 2,944
Last seen: 6 hours, 23 minutes
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: trendal]
#13585714 - 12/05/10 03:29 PM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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It's similar but there are many important differences and this bacterium has evolved ways of coping with those differences which is the reason it is able to integrate arsenic in place of phosphorous.
The similarities are why arsenic is so toxic to most organisms--it is taken up and incorporated as phosphorous but because of the differences, the new structures don't behave as they should and the organism begins to fail. Saying it's not a big deal because they're in the same column of the periodic table is like saying silicon-based life would be no big deal if found. Granted this isn't as big a deal as that, but biologists have been saying for a long time that six elements are needed for "life as we know it": carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, and phosphorous. Well now the requirements for life as we know it just changed to: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, and phosphorous/arsenic.
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johnm214
Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 16,593
Loc: Americas
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: trendal]
#13585780 - 12/05/10 03:47 PM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
trendal said:
This story isn't really that interesting...
The "new" life that they "found" was actually some bacteria that they had forced to use arsenic instead of phosphorous. They took bacteria from lakes with high arsenic concentrations, then grew them in phosphorous-deprived conditions with lots of arsenic present instead.
While its true they grew the organisms in media with arsenic and no phosphoruse to speak of, it doesn't follow that they didn't "find" these critters or that they "forced" them to start using arsenic.
Their is no reason to suspect the organisms weren't incorporating arsenic naturally. The purpose of attempting to grow them in media lacking exogenous phosphorus was to demonstrate that they were able to substitute arsenic and continue to live and reproduce in the absence of phosphorus. This is probably the simplest way to prove that the arsenic is not only being incorporated into the biomolecules but that it is actually working- i.e. the enzymes et cet that have arsenic substitutions are actually preforming the essential functions of the cell rather than simply being produced while normal phosphorus-incorporating enzymes sustain life. In the later situation, there would be no evidence, given the study's methodology, that the Ar-substituted enzymes were actually functional or not poisoning the cell and that reproduction and life continued despite this rather than because of it.
Quote:
It doesn't surprise me that arsenic would replace phosphorous...they're both in the same column of the periodic table - right above/below each other, actually. They share many of the same qualities. Most, actually...the only thing they differ on is weight (which will, of course, effect bonding).
As Chuang Tzu mentions, the uniqueness of this discovery is not that As is incorporated, which happens all the time in living things, its that arsenic is incorporated into biomolecules in place of phosphorus and the organism continues to reproduce and live.
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Baby_Hitler
Anarcho-Technologist
Registered: 03/06/02
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: johnm214]
#13588432 - 12/06/10 02:15 AM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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So can these organisms survive without Arsenic, but with Phosphorus?
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ChuangTzu
starvingphysicist
Registered: 09/04/02
Posts: 2,944
Last seen: 6 hours, 23 minutes
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Quote:
Baby_Hitler said:
So can these organisms survive without Arsenic, but with Phosphorus?
Yes.
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snoot
look alive ∞
Registered: 01/30/05
Posts: 8,877
Loc: 45º parallel
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: ChuangTzu]
#13599308 - 12/08/10 01:20 AM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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I think we will continue to discover such things, until we realize that the integrity of life should never be undermined. the continued expansion of the boundaries for life will forever fascinate meh. 
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I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.
- Simone de Beauvoir -
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weedist
Duke of Mania
Registered: 10/19/10
Posts: 1,258
Loc: TN, US
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Re: NASA Finds New Life [Re: snoot]
#13610920 - 12/10/10 03:35 AM (2 years, 5 months ago) |
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Wait until titanium comes
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 You're talking to me all wrong, its, its the wrong tone. You do it again...I'll stab you in the face with a soldering iron 
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