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DNA-Less 'Red Rain' Cells Reproduce At 121 C
eldavojohn writes "A new paper up for prepublication from the controversial solid-state physicist Godfrey Louis claims that the cells Louis collected from a Keralan red rain incident divide and produce daughter cells at 121 degrees Celsius. While unusual, this is not unheard of as the paper recalls cells cultivated from hydrothermal vents are known to reproduce at 121 C as well. Of course, caution is exercised when dealing with the possible explanation surrounding the theory of panspermia but the MIT Technology Review says researchers 'examined the way these fluoresce when bombarded with light and say it is remarkably similar to various unexplained emission spectra seen in various parts of the galaxy. One such place is the Red Rectangle, a cloud of dust and gas around a young star in the Monocerous constellation.'"
That's Monoceros - Unicorn. It's not an adjective with the "ous" ending.
What does that mean? Has it been peer-reviewed yet? Has it been accepted? Or is it just at the stage where the author's submitted it, and those other steps still need to happen? The linked page only says its "submitted".
If it hasn't been accepted, posting it here is rather silly on a lot of counts. Not to mention that, with some journals, doing something like that can result in the paper being summarily rejected (e.g Nature, Science).
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And the material found in the rain bears a striking, if superficial, resemblance to red blood cells.
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A cell wall was always a hard one to explain since we seem to jump from viruses to one cells organisms.
Actually, the cell wall is just about the easiest thing to explain. Just take a bunch of short-chain molecules that are hydrophobic on one end and hydrophilic on the other and throw them in water, and the self-organize into pockets very like the cell wall.
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It looks like more recent publications have resolved this: "The alga was identified as a specie belonging to the genus Trentepohlia. The region in Changanacherry from where the red rain was reported was found to be densely vegetated with plenty of lichen on trees, rocks and lampposts. Samples of lichen collected from there also were cultured in the microbiology laboratory of TBGRI. The study showed that the lichen collected from the site gave rise to algae similar to the ones cultured from the spores obtained from the rain water samples. The spores in the rainwater, therefore, most probably are of local origin." http://web.archive.org/web/20060613135746/http://www.geocities.com/iamgoddard/Sampath2001.pdf
Which is not to say they are wrong. There is a lot of speculation that neither DNA nor RNA were the actual encoding means of early life, but some other double helix that was more stable in the radiation and temperature extremes of early Earth. If this research justifies an in-depth study of what is in those hypothetical "nuclei" and what comprises that "cell membrane", that should tell us whether this is for real or whether it's some kind of nonliving artefact.
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The official investigation concluded that they were spores from local algae, and that the initial DNA tests were flawed. Wikipedia has the details, as usual.
To go from "our test found no DNA" to "there is no DNA" to "they must be extraterrestrial" to "they look like the dust clouds in Monocerous" is a series of leaps that go wayyy ahead of the available evidence, in my view.
It would be very interesting to be proven wrong, however.
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Your standard flamethrower is capable of operation at well above 121c. Should be no big deal...
What you're referring to is called a cell membrane which is formed by lipid bilayers. Cell walls are usually more rigid and are located outside of the cell membrane.
However, the parent is still confusing because algae, plants, protozoa, etc. all have different structures of cell walls. He doesn't really specify which specific one(s) are hard for us to explain.
...welcome our Red Rain daughter cell overlords.
Indeed. And you probably have a bottle of suitable short-chain molecules, hydrophobic on one end, hydrophilic on the other end sitting on your kitchen sink. You probably know it better as "dish soap".
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I am a microbiologist and this claim in my opinion is very weak. Remember, extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof to be accepted. This guy is a physicist, not a biologist, so that already raises many red flags.
In the arXiv blog linked, it says that Godfrey collected numerous samples of the "red rain". Since he is not a microbiologist, I doubt he took the necessary precautions to prevent contamination with terrestrial microbes, though it is debatable whether this is even possible. This alone is the biggest stumbling block to his claims. The blog also says that the cell "reproduce" at 121C yet also states that it has no DNA (all form of nucleic acids?). This flies in the face of all known life on earth. Even red blood cells initially have a nuclei before losing them as they mature. The point of reproduction is to pass on your genetic code to your offspring. This suggests to me that we might be looking at a abiological/chemical process. Did Godfrey try to detect the production of metabolite byproducts from his sample? Reproduction is a very energy intensive biochemical operation and should produce detectable metabolites. My research field is hyperthermophilic Archaea that grows at 90C or more and I know the existence of microbes that can grow at even higher temperatures, so this part of the claim is feasible. Overall, I caution extreme scepticism until Godfrey can provide extraordinary proof of his claims.
Has anybody checked what pH they can reproduce at?
After reading that book, I ingested copious amounts of acid to ensure I would be one of the survivors.
An obvious question is that if these cells divide at 121 degrees Celcius, what do they do in the extreme cold of space, just hibernate?
Yes. That's how they get from planet to planet. Then, when some of them reach a planet and it gets hot enough, they divide and reproduce, and start growing other, more complex types of cells, and then quickly form intelligent beings who reproduce quickly into an army and take over the planet.
Now that these researchers have figured out how to activate the seed cells, I expect the red-cell alien overlord army to rise up in a few weeks.
Ah, youngling, you have many years until you have that PhD in your hand. What you're suggesting is a negative results, caused from "not seeing what we wanted to see", which can be rebutted in a million different ways, most of which you probably do not know yet. This is one of the reasons the peer review process exists. I personally do not believe anything I read on a non-peer reviewed paper, unless of course it is coming from well documented, well funded full professors.
I personally do not believe anything I read on a non-peer reviewed paper,
A peer reviewer is just someone working in a field. If you need to rely on peer reviewers to determine whether a paper in your field is credible, you're simply not competent and should find a different job. For people working in a field, peer review is useful for cutting down the crap, not for establishing credibility.
What you're suggesting is a negative results, caused from "not seeing what we wanted to see", which can be rebutted in a million different ways, most of which you probably do not know yet.
Negative results like that are incredibly useful: either they show that a particular experimental approach fails, saving other people the effort to go down that path, or they are a new phenomenon. Keeping such results from getting published is really quite harmful to science, causing needless duplication of the same dead ends again and again.