NASA Life Discovery: New Bacteria Makes DNA With Arsenic

[Frankie]

No, today's NASA announcement is not about proof of life on another world.
A recent release hinting at "an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life" had bloggers abuzz the past few days with speculation that the space agency had discovered extraterrestrial life.
The truth, however, is that scientists have found life on Earth that's perhaps the most "alien" organism yet seen.
A new species of bacteria found in California's Mono Lake is the first known life-form that uses arsenic to make its DNA and proteins, scientists announced today. (Get a genetics overview.)
Dubbed the GFAJ-1 strain, the bacteria can substitute arsenic for phosphorus, one of the six main "building blocks" for most known life. The other key ingredients for life are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur.
Arsenic is toxic to most known organisms, in part because it can mimic the chemical properties of phosphorus, allowing the poison to disrupt cellular activity.
The newfound bacteria, described online this week in the journal Science, not only tolerates high concentrations of arsenic, it actually incorporates the chemical into its cells, the study authors found.
For the complete article please follow this link:
NASA Life Discovery: New Bacteria Makes DNA With Arsenic

 

[csmsss]

Interesting, but...can someone explain to me why the National Aeronautics and Space Agency is spending taxpayer dollars on such things? Isn't this rather far afield from their charter?

 

[steved13]

It's explained how they found it in the article. Seems it might be in their wheelhouse.

 

[Jeremy0322]

NASA pretty much has the authority to study anything on this planet that may advance their studies of other planets, so looking for extremophile life on this planet is right up their alley.

On a side note, this is really interesting if you think about what the new life form could imply, makes you wonder....

 

[Yaten13]

A bunch of chemists are crying bull**** on this though. Although the bug seems to be very tolerant of arsenic in the water, the idea that the strong phosphate bonds in the DNA backbone could be replaced by the much weaker arsenic bonds just doesn't make biophysical sense. It will be interesting to see how this plays out though.

 

[Jeremy0322]

The NASA study of arsenic-based life was fatally flawed, say scientists. - By Carl Zimmer - Slate Magazine

 

[Frankie]

Bummer. Now I think it was all a cover up for another agenda. Maybe they did find life on one of Saturn's moons and threw this out there to cover up a leak prior to the release of this claim. LOL!

 

[Jeremy0322]

Sadly, its probably just another case of scientists finding what they want to see and not what is actually there, its a sad reality in the field