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California Lake's Arsenic Hints At a Shadow Biosphere
MichaelSmith writes "Scientists think that there might be arsenic-based life in Mono Lake, California. If it's shown to exist, such life could have evolved independently from our own, or it could have forked from ours at a very early stage."
This Monolake?
-mkb
Did Nature Also Choose Arsenic?
Well for one, a great deal of biochemistry involves ATP in normal life forms that has little to do with energy transport. Proteins can be activated through phosphorylation by ATP. DNA is constructed using ATP and its base analogues. Glucose must be phosphorylated twice before it is done being biochemically broken down to reducing equivalents and CO2. These processes especially phosphorylation of proteins and DNA structure, all work because PO4 is the right size. A system based on AsO4 would have proteins and genetic structure much different than our own structurally speaking. Also, the triarsenate analogues could very well be markedly unstable.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
developing a methodology to search for something is usually considered publishable research in and of itself. (if said methodology is genuinely unique) the results (be they positive or negative) are often presented in a follow-up paper.
http://kered.org
To those who didn't get it, parent is referring to the "I accidentally X", a 4chan meme. The verb is intentionally left out.
/g/ I need your help .rar files
It's based on the following post:
hey
I accidentally 93MB of
what should I do...is this dangerous ?
Read more about it here: http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/I_accidentally_X
visit my pal the xkcd explainer!
Confused parent made a mistake and is actually referring to Cyanide which is said to smell and taste like bitter almonds, not Arsenic.
visit my pal the xkcd explainer!
Yes. no.
You only need a very small amount to be able to taste it (and bitter is a taste, almond is an smell).
He's referring to the kind of almond, not the taste. A bitter almond is one of two types of almonds, the other type being the sweet almond.
Don't put unleaded in a diesel.
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
From Terry Bisson - I think this short story sums it up nicely
http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
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You will love the ending.
Well for one, a great deal of biochemistry involves ATP in normal life forms that has little to do with energy transport. Proteins can be activated through phosphorylation by ATP. DNA is constructed using ATP and its base analogues. Glucose must be phosphorylated twice before it is done being biochemically broken down to reducing equivalents and CO2. These processes especially phosphorylation of proteins and DNA structure, all work because PO4 is the right size. A system based on AsO4 would have proteins and genetic structure much different than our own structurally speaking. Also, the triarsenate analogues could very well be markedly unstable.
The Times article is dreadful.
Ronald S. Oremland of the USGS has been researching this for years. He is a fascinating speaker on the subject.
He has shown that there are microbes in Mono Lake that have an arsenic based metabolism.He and his team have elucidated a good part of the metabolic pathways involved Similar microbes are found in soil as well.
For a brief over view of the metabolism see http://microbiology.usgs.gov/geomicrobiology_arsenic.html