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California Lake's Arsenic Hints At a Shadow Biosphere

Posted by timothy on from the some-more-tea-dear? dept.

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."

6 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Paper by Wolfe-Simon et al. by Group+XVII · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did Nature Also Choose Arsenic?

    1. Re:Paper by Wolfe-Simon et al. by Hurricane78 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, the answer is still: No.

      I just read TFA. (Yeah, I know, shame on me. ;)

      And actually, she is just taking buckets of the water, diluting them so they contain more arsenic and less phosphorus, and adding sugar etc, to see if she finds organisms who then thrive.
      But the point is: She still found nothing at all. She’s just taking water and playing with it.

      Now of course I’m not saying that the theory isn’t true. Since we simply don’t know it yet.
      So her work is good and I’m happy she does it.

      Just... saying that there is arsenic life there... is just disingenuous. If you know what I mean.
      But I bet she did not intent to be disingenuous. Instead I bet, that the media hype machine is to blame.

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  2. Re:Hmm.. by wizardforce · · Score: 5, Informative

    but I'm not nearly chemist enough to know if there are messy details preventing a suitably evolved biological system from substituting one for the other.

    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.
  3. Re:The important questions... by TheJokeExplainer · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!
  4. Re:The important questions... by macklin01 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm sorry, I don't know these computers you speak of. Can you put that in a car analogy?

    Don't put unleaded in a diesel.

    --
    OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
  5. Re:Hmm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    but I'm not nearly chemist enough to know if there are messy details preventing a suitably evolved biological system from substituting one for the other.

    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