NASA Finds New Life (This Afternoon)

While the official 2pm conference should have more answers, most of the internet has decided that NASA has discovered a completely new life form based on arsenic instead of the more traditional organic materials. We'll know more in a few hours.

Comments

It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[eldavojohn]

Mono Lake was mentioned back in 2009 and in March as potentially harboring this 'shadow biosphere.' Felisa Wolfe-Simon, the geobiologist credited with this (Iron Lisa = Felisa, get it?) led me to an interesting PDF that begins:

If you were asked to speculate about the form extra-terrestrial life on Mars might take, which geomicrobial phenomenon might you select as a model system, assuming that life on Mars would be 'primitive'? Give your reasons.

At the end of my senior year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1968, I took Professor Ehrlich’s final for his Geomicrobiology course. The above question beckoned to me like the Sirens to Odysseus, for if I answered, it would take so much time and thought that I would never get around to the exam’s other essay questions and consequently, would be "shipwrecked" by flunking the course. So, I passed it up.With this 41-year perspective in mind, this manuscript is now submitted to Professor Ehrlich for (belated) "extra-credit." R.S. Oremland

This has been an interesting topic in sci-fi, I recall an X-Files that revolved around silicon based life.

I certainly hope that we get more details than this teaser (all other news articles seem to point back to Gizmodo). From the sound of this leak I can't tell if the DNA itself is foreign or if it's made of the same Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine with similar hydrogen bonds or if the DNA is similar but different in functionality or if it doesn't create proteins and RNA the same way or if phosphorus component is just switched with arsenic (two very similar elements prebiotic chemically) or if the whole bacteria is made of arsenic. At what point in the chain of DNA to organism does this thing seriously differ? The Gizmodo article is painfully weak on detail.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[boog3r]

for an announcement this big they would have to have found adenosine triadenide.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[Halo1]

According to an article by the official Flemish news service, the beans were already spilled this afternoon in a documentary shown by a Dutch broadcast service (VPRO) on this topic. It's indeed about Mono lake and Felisa Wolfe-Simon. The article also contains a small film fragment in which they confirms that it's indeed about a life form that uses arsenic instead of phosphor (it also contains some sound bytes from the researcher, in English).

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[boristdog]

First time I heard of Mono Lake was via Mark Twain:

http://www.monobasinresearch.org/historical/twain.htm

Sounds like a really weird place.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[mcgrew]

Its first communication: "Ugly bags of mostly water!"

"To reach out to new life and new civilizations. To baldly go where no one has ever gone before."

I don't understand this; the announcement that there was going to be a press conference today was posted a few days ago. Why not wait until NASA announces it to post today's story?

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[natehoy]

Because then 1,459 other people would have posted the pre-pre-pre-preview version and your carefully-researched, well-though-out, and more accurate followup with actual useful links and information would be immediately rejected as a "duplicate" and you wouldn't get posting credit.

It's not about who is BEST, it's about who is FIRST. That's been true of all media outlets for over a century now, it's just that the Internet lets us all be cub reporters and the pace is a tad more frenetic.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[milkmage]

"I recall an X-Files that revolved around silicon based life"

No kill I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_Dark

Soon, another guard is killed and a circulation pump, vital to the colony's main reactor, is stolen. Unfortunately, the entire unit is obsolete, and no replacement is available. The original component must be found within 48 hours or the reactor will fail, rendering the mine uninhabitable. Scotty improvises a temporary replacement pump. Spock suggests that the creature might be a silicon-based lifeform and would thus be resistant to the "Type I" phasers carried by the colony guards; however, the landing party's "Type II" phasers should be able to stop it.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[the_other_chewey]

To baldly go where no one has ever gone before.

That explains Picard, but what about curly Kirk?

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[gilleain]

for an announcement this big they would have to have found adenosine triadenide.

Adenosine Triarsenate? (ATA)

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[bluie-]

"Yes, is the alien carbon-based or silicone-based?"

"Uh, the second one. Zillifone. Next question."

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[chill]

That would be the "Ugly bags of mostly water!" comment.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[gilleain]

1. Silicon-based life : not possible, it doesn't form a diverse enough range of compounds.
2. Foreign DNA - low sequence identity with highly conserved proteins (histones, for example) would be odd. I doubt that is the case here.
3. ATCG - there is really only one way for these bases to form DNA. Well, there's A, B, and Z forms, and telomeres, but no new ways.
4. Different transcription/translation; possible, but again doubtful. Might have different tRNAs, I guess, if there are some special requirements for arsenate-amino acids.
5. Phosphate/arsenate switch - most likely scenario.

As a final note to researchers on 'terrestrial astrobiology' - evidence of exotic Earth-based life is NOT the same as evidence of extra-terrestrial life...

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[MtHuurne]

The VPRO documentary was first broadcast on November 23. I don't know when the interviews in it were made, it might be some months before. In the interviews Felisa says she does not have proof of life using arsenic instead of phosphor yet. So I'm guessing that she does have proof now and will present it in the press conference.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[Tetsujin]

To baldly go where no one has ever gone before.

That explains Picard, but what about curly Kirk?

Shatner has a toupee.

It's a well-kept industry secret, though, so be careful about who you tell.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[Chapter80]

To baldly go where no one has ever gone before.

That explains Picard, but what about curly Kirk?

Kirk's carpet doesn't match his drapes. No carpet; he's got "hardwood".

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[mcgrew]

Kirk never went to Velara III, where the silicon life form calls humans in general and Picard in particular "ugly bags of mostly water".

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[boristdog]

Now I know where I'm going on vacation this spring.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[Kreigaffe]

This has been an interesting topic in sci-fi, I recall an X-Files that revolved around silicon based life.

More importantly, there was a ST:TOS episode involving a silicon-based life form. Which was AWESOME.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[camperdave]

As a final note to researchers on 'terrestrial astrobiology' - evidence of exotic Earth-based life is NOT the same as evidence of extra-terrestrial life...

I am quite sure they are aware of that. However, the broader the range of environments in which we find life here, the broader the range of environments in which we might find life out there. I mean, it's far easier to look for something when you know the characteristics of what you're looking for.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[Khyber]

"for an announcement this big they would have to have found adenosine triadenide."

Nope. The simplest thing to do is just take the bacteria in the lake and keeps raising the arsenic levels. If it survives, it's not of our typical biological expectations and thus our 'markers for life' just required a whole new re-write.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Hey, just wanted to weigh in before you ruin your own vacation this spring. I grew up in Tuolumne County, California, just west of the Mono Lake area (in fact, we have a few historical sites dedicated to Mark Twain in that area). The foothills of the Sierra Nevada were my playground and Yosemite is nothing more than a tourist trap to us locals. If you are going to head up to Mono Lake or the nearby Bridgeport Reservoir or Grant Lake for vacation, don't go in the spring. The snowpack will last well into May and you will freeze your tucus off if you decide to go swimming in any of those mountain lakes that early (essentially you would just be swimming in melted snow...and it really is frackin' cold). If you really want to check out that location, especially for lake activities, I suggest waiting until very late July or, even better August. The drive up there will be hot as all balls, but the lakes will be much more temperate and kind to splash around in.

Just do us a favor and be careful with your campfires and such that time of year. A lot of us get tired of having half our damn county burn down every summer because of tourists being careless with cigarette butts and such. Dry grass burns fast. Just remember that and you should have a dandy vacation. Enjoy the Sierra Nevada when you get here. =)

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[LanMan04]

More like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_in_the_Dark

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[GooberToo]

I went swimming in Mono Lake in the 90s

Or at least that's what you told your girlfriend. ;) ;)

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[indi0144]

IANAeB but people in the future will remember this era in ET life research as the stupid-era, comparable to when we used to think the sun revolved around the earth, because we are actually looking for life AS IF the only possible way for life to exists in an Earth-like environment. I mean, they have to have the same DNA composition as us, the have to be in a earth-like planet, they need oxygen and and atmosphere which is tolerable for US. Theres not an only set of predefined conditions (based in the only ones we know, ours) that make life possible, it's so simple that always have puzzled me why scientist concentrate the research in earth like environments instead of create alternative environments in our labs, here, with different mixes of the basic soup, and different atmospheric conditions.

"we are the only know (intelligent) form of life around, so, any other form of life should be like us" Where this obviously narrows the research a lot it is a short sighted approach.

Scientist will probably be SHOCKED when we make first contact and find that ETs don't actually think the Beatles sound good, that they don't have "politics", or that they find our gastronomic preferences an insult to the "Galactic Convention of Life Rights" but what do I know, I'm from the marketing dept, I'm just slacking around here :)

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[gilleain]

evidence of exotic Earth-based life is NOT the same as evidence of extra-terrestrial life...

I am quite sure they are aware of that. However, the broader the range of environments in which we find life here, the broader the range of environments in which we might find life out there. I mean, it's far easier to look for something when you know the characteristics of what you're looking for.

Researchers may be aware of that, but there is always the implication that if you find an organism that can tolerate an environment different from Earth-normal this means planets out there with that environment could also support life. This doesn't follow at all - it might be that you need the more benign conditions found on most of the Earth in order to support enough life that some of that life can branch out into specialised areas like extreme salt, temperature, acidity, etc. In fact I strongly suspect this is the case.

I suppose the only way I can see extremophiles (such as this arsenate tolerant species) providing evidence for a broader range of planetary niches is for planets like Venus, which might once have been Earth-like, but have gone 'bad'. Some life might cling on in these circumstances, but not be able to provide a proper biosphere.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[orgelspieler]

What if it's magnetic microbes from mars? Not only would that be interesting, but alliterative to boot!

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[merideth]

I certainly hope that we get more details than this teaser (all other news articles seem to point back to Gizmodo). From the sound of this leak I can't tell if the DNA itself is foreign or if it's made of the same Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine with similar hydrogen bonds or if the DNA is similar but different in functionality or if it doesn't create proteins and RNA the same way or if phosphorus component is just switched with arsenic (two very similar elements prebiotic chemically) or if the whole bacteria is made of arsenic. At what point in the chain of DNA to organism does this thing seriously differ? The Gizmodo article is painfully weak on detail.

Try this article instead.

It uses phosphorus like the rest of us, it's just capable of substituting arsenic when in an arsenic-rich environment.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[kindbud]

You got your wish. The bacteria in question incorporate arsenic in place of phosphorus not only in their DNA, lipids and proteins, but also in their ATP. Just astonishing.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[Anonymous Coward]

And Glenn Beck is based on cyanide.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[boristdog]

Groovy. Thanks for the info. I'll actually be near there anyway in August, so maybe I'll drop in on Mono Lake then.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[camperdave]

Researchers may be aware of that, but there is always the implication that if you find an organism that can tolerate an environment different from Earth-normal this means planets out there with that environment could also support life. This doesn't follow at all...

Actually, it does imply exactly that. If life can exist in environment-X here on Earth, then they can potentially exist in environment-X elsewhere in the universe. Otherwise you wind up with an Earth_is_special bias to the universe.

...it might be that you need the more benign conditions found on most of the Earth in order to support enough life that some of that life can branch out into specialised areas like extreme salt, temperature, acidity, etc. In fact I strongly suspect this is the case.

I strongly suspect this to be the case as well. However, there is no scientific basis for this belief. Life could start as extremophile and evolve to inhabit more "normal" environments. My guess is that life here started in conditions that would now be considered extreme, like the life forms surrounding smokers and other deep ocean volcanic vents.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[mcgrew]

No, the "devil in the dark" called humans "murderers" (I just watched that one recently). The life forms on Velara III specifically called Picard and the other humans "ugly bags of mostly water".

But yes, both were silicon based life forms. Bones healed the "devil in the dark" with silicon cement.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[treeves]

OTOH, what is the relative abundance of P and As in the universe?
According to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SolarSystemAbundances.png P is about 1000x more abundant than As. i.e. life isn't limited by P availability in a way that As availability helps.
So, this discovery is not much of a game-changer, IMO.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[camperdave]

That's an interesting chart. I can understand the general downward trend: the heavier the element, the more energy and raw material it takes to make, but why the element by element zig-zag, and why the big dip in the lithium, beryllium, boron portion of the line?

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[treeves]

I suppose it has to do with the relative stability of the nuclei, i.e. when you whack two carbon nuclei together, if it is much more likely to get a neon than to get a fluorine and a proton, then you will have more neon than fluorine. Notice the even atomic-numbered elements are more prevalent than odd-atomic numbered.

I thought of another way NASA could have spun this info: take whatever result the Drake equation gives you, and multiply it by 1.001. Not so exciting now, is it?

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[treeves]

I thought I had replied to myself to post a correction earlier, but I see I did not.
I totally blew that hypothetical nuclear reaction. I should have written C + C -> Ne + He (more) vs. C + C -> F + Li (less)

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Yosemite is a tourist trap?

Yep.

Really, the valley is a tiny part of the whole park and to not go because it is popular would be sad.

And the whole park is a tiny part of the incredible Sierra Nevada, and, in my opinion, not even the coolest part. The fact that it is so popular simply makes it messy and makes the wildlife annoying as fuck. Any location where squirrels are brave enough to walk up to tourists and beg for food can be considered a tourist trap. If I wanted to go to a place where bears have little qualms of breaking into tourists' cars and campers' tents I would go to Yosemite. If I wanted to go somewhere were I can actually get away from annoying pets and have the freedom to relax, I would go camping in 1 of 1000 other places in the Sierra Nevada, like, say, somewhere along Sonora Pass.

It is too incredible to skip.

Quite honestly it isn't. It's just popular. There are other impressive, amazing rock formations nearby that don't have all the hype about them. Personally, I think Table Mountain is really cool. But even looking past that, places like Moaning Caverns, Crystal Palace, and Natural Bridges make for better day trips. Hell, I can head up Highway 108 to Pinecrest and go on a 30 minute hike to end up at Cleo's Bath where I can actually play near waterfalls safely and keep away from annoying people with Cameras. I can rip my clothes off and go splash around in the South Fork with no fear of getting caught for exposing myself. I can go perch myself up on the top of Yankee or Big Hill and catch a better sunset than I can from the top of Half Dome (And let me tell you, take a girl up there and she's more likely to get twitterpated and plant one on you than at Half Dome, the Half Dome hike just makes her tired and cranky). I am not just blathering out of ignorance. I have been to all these places and I know of dozens more that I haven't had the opportunity to explore yet. My point is, Yosemite is over-hyped. There are cooler places in the Sierra Nevada: places where you can find flowers that few people have ever seen, places where you can catch sight of Bald Eagles tending to their young, places where you can get naked, get drunk, and fire off shotguns indiscriminately without hurting anything. That's a vacation right there. That's freedom. Yosemite isn't much more than the nature's version of Disney Land in my opinion: too much cost and not enough wow, but the kids should visit it once anyways just to say they did.

I think that's a stretch.

[Lat3 Bl00m3r]

This still doesn't explain the information embargo, so I'd say this is hooey. That is unless, it's just a poorly constructed disclosure script, and next up they're going to "find" the same thing on Titan or something...

Re:I think that's a stretch.

[Monkeedude1212]

No... Don't you understand?

This is bigger than NASA's ammouncement...

THE INTERNET AGREED ON SOMETHING!

Re:I think that's a stretch.

[chichilalescu]

+1 "completely pointless question that destroys the basis for solipsism by just being".
but seriously, your bafflement is annusing.

Re:I think that's a stretch.

[Idarubicin]

This still doesn't explain the information embargo...

It does if this is being published in a respectable, peer-reviewed, scientific journal concurrent with the announcement. Scientific journals will generally provide advance copies of 'interesting' upcoming publications to members of the media, on condition that the news be embargoed until a particular time -- generally around the time that the full publication becomes accessible to the journal's readers. Journalists get advance copies so that they can start writing their articles early, so they can get quotes from relevant experts, and so that there is at least a faint hope that their coverage will be well-researched, thorough, and accurate, and bear at least a passing resemblance to the actual science being presented.

That's the right way to do a scientific announcement, by the way. (The wrong way is exemplified the Pons and Fleischmann's 'science by press conference' cold-fusion debacle, where you make the public announcement before your scientific peers have a chance to review your work.

Re:I think that's a stretch.

[stjobe]

Exactly. If you look at NASA's announcement of the press conference, the headline is "NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2" (emphasis mine).

It's not a NASA embargo, it's a Science Journal embargo.

Re:I think that's a stretch.

[xtracto]

Yup... scientists these days have to be *very* *very* careful on how they announce their findings.

Take for example Dr. Eugene Podkletnov findings on gravity-shielding. The world could have made a strong investment in further research for this technology. However, because a sensationalist journalist decided to equate the findings with "OMG We have anti gravity!!!!" and publish a sensationalist article, there was a huge backlash in this line of research. And thus scientists are completely shy of publishing new findings.

Consider that such scientific article had already been peer reviewed and accepted in a scientific publication... it was just because an unscrupulous editor leaked the paper that the fallout came.

Re:I think that's a stretch.

[LordGibson]

It did not!

Re:I think that's a stretch.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

No... Don't you understand?

This is bigger than NASA's ammouncement...

THE INTERNET AGREED ON SOMETHING!

Heh. Remember the last time that happened? When the Playstation 3 launched?

Re:I think that's a stretch.

[BryanL]

So, when sentient, alien life appears on Earth and turns out to be hostile and destroys a few million people, I have to wait for the peer reviewed article to come out to read about it? I wonder if aliens let there pets read magazines. Either way, I welcome our new alien overlords.

Re:I think that's a stretch.

[treeves]

"annusing"

Hmm. That could be a useful portmanteau: a cross between annoying and amusing.

I can see why you chose not to spell it as "anusing". Takes one to a completely different place.

Why not wait ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not wait until 2pm before posting the article then ?

Re:Why not wait ?

[pedantic bore]

Why not wait until 2pm before posting the article then ?

Anyone can comment on facts, but conjecture is more fun.

Re:Why not wait ?

[tsalmark]

That's not as fun as random uninformed speculation.

Re:Why not wait ?

[gsslay]

It is passed 2pm. At least where I am. And no-one else reads slashdot anywhere else but where I am, otherwise the headline would give a time zone, wouldn't it?

Re:Why not wait ?

[Monkeedude1212]

Facts can be so misleading

But rumours, true or false, are often revealing!

That's a Bingo!

Re:Why not wait ?

[John Hasler]

But random misinformed speculation is more fun yet.

Re:Why not wait ?

[Assmasher]

In other news, Sarah Palin suggests that GizModo should be 'targeted like the Taliban!'

Re:Why not wait ?

[jollyreaper]

Anyone can comment on facts, but conjecture is more fun.

I'll give it a shot. "NASA announces the discovery of alien life, passably human, currently tweeting from Alaska. You betcha."

Re:Why not wait ?

[jayme0227]

Are you sure about that? I think they probably just wanted to . . .

Re:Why not wait ?

[sexconker]

We all know that Eastern (US) is the right timezone. Just set you clocks to that. If were talking about a different zone, then we'll mention it.

West coast best coast.
East coast least coast.

Re:Why not wait ?

[Gilmoure]

Throw lots of money and weapons at them?

Re:Why not wait ?

[suso]

Because major events like this deserve a couple posts? Usually a big event gets covered with pre, post, post post and duplicate posts on Slashdot.

Re:Why not wait ?

[Chapter80]

It is passed 2pm. At least where I am. And no-one else reads slashdot anywhere else but where I am, otherwise the headline would give a time zone, wouldn't it?

Are you an arsenic-based life form? What time is it there?

Re:Why not wait ?

[gumbi west]

Prevents us from having an article to not read.

Re:Why not wait ?

[silverglade00]

If only more of life went by the rules we learned in playground rhymes at recess. I can only say one two three NOT IT!!

Re:Why not wait ?

[camperdave]

...a NASA press conference is probably the timezone that NASA is in.

NASA has a centre in every time zone covering the continental US. Furthermore, the ISS traverses every single time zone every 90 minutes. So no help there.

Re:Why not wait ?

[Leebert]

The NASA press release specifies "EST". http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/nov/HQ_M10-167_Astrobiology.html

Re:Why not wait ?

[Culture20]

We all know that Eastern (US) is the right timezone. Just set you clocks to that. If were talking about a different zone, then we'll mention it.

But I thought sourceforge/ /. was based in Chicago...

Re:Why not wait ?

[semiotec]

Not to mention TFA is one of the most garbled up piece of hyperbolic shit written about the news.

"...her team have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today."

Not really, the structure is still most the same, except phosphorus is very likely swapped out for arsenic. They don't have a direct proof that phosphorus is used in DNA yet, but it's very likely. It has been a theoretical possibiltiy, and now they very likely have found the example.

"...this discovery does indeed change everything we know about biology."

Err.... no, it changes some concepts, but a lot of what we know about biology is still the same. Eating arsenic is still going to kill people.

I am not disputing the importance of this finding, but as NASA scientist said, it expands what we know about biology, rather than "change(s) everything we know".

Why not just link to NASA? http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html

Even NY Times has a better write up: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/science/03arsenic.html?src=mv&pagewanted=all

Great

[Pojut]

I can't wait for the public to give a collective yawn over this exciting news. I've been trying to educate people at work today about why this is such a big deal, but their responses have generally been "oh, more bacteria...yay."

-_-;;

Re:Great

[Pojut]

Combined from two other posts I made:

If what's being reported is accurate, they've discovered a life form whose DNA was previously thought to be completely, unequivocally, no-exceptions impossible. Not just "we haven't found it", but impossible.

The point is that it means that life could exist in ways we haven't even conceived of yet. It's not the finding itself that's important, but rather the implications of having hard confirmed evidence that what we have long thought was wrong.

Re:Great

[bucaneer]

The Gizmodo article only says that these new bacteria have arsenic instead of phosphorus in their DNA, which is not enough information to understand just how ground-breaking it is. Mind you, arsenic is in the same group as phosphorus, so their chemical properties are comparable. If the rest of their chemical makeup is the same (deoxyribose for a sugar, same set of nitrogenous bases, etc), then it's most probable that they evolved from regular bacteria under the extreme conditions of that lake (such as lack of phoshorus and over-abundance of arsenic). While that would be extremely interesting for biochemists, microbiologists and other scientists, it won't change our general understanding of life much. Now, if arsenic was just the first indication that this form of life is different, and further study will reveal completely different biochemistry as well, then we can talk about possible implications for extra-terrestrial life and all that universally exciting stuff.

Re:Great

[gilleain]

Oh, right. An arsenate DNA backbone. Makes sense, I suppose. Not as exotic as PNA (peptide nucleic acid) though, and that's been synthesised. I don't really see this as hugely exciting - interesting, yes, but not the same as some radically different architecture for organisms.

Re:Great

[profplump]

At least here on earth, beings with copper-based oxygen transport (hemocyanin) have blue blood.

Re:Great

[delinear]

Well think about it - assuming it's not a branching form of existing life on earth, it would indicate that life had sprung up independently twice on one planet. Leave out the consideration that this means life could exist in more places in the universe than we could definitively say before, this would be proof that we weren't some astronomical anomaly. Not quite as exciting as proof of life on another planet, but very, very close. If life can spring from nothing twice here that renders it much more likely it can happen out there.

Re:Great

[DinDaddy]

How about blue?

http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/horseshoecrab/funfacts.html

Re:Great

[camperdave]

Yes. I'm much more interested in the upcoming Falcon/Dragon launch.

Re:Great

[Rich0]

they've discovered a life form whose DNA was previously thought to be completely, unequivocally, no-exceptions impossible. Not just "we haven't found it", but impossible.

Citation, please. Not the part about discovering the new form of DNA. The part where scientists (and not just 1-3 of them) have already concluded that it is impossible for life to be based on this new form of DNA.

I've never heard any discussions on arsenate-based DNA, let alone that it is impossible for it to exist. Then again, I'm not an astrobiologist.

Re:Great

[celle]

"...but their responses have generally been "oh, more bacteria...yay.""

Tell them the new life forms ate the researchers and are on their way here. If they still don't care, find someone who isn't an animated corpse.

Re:Great

[Tsiangkun]

Yeah, but the processes that use, say ATP, as an energy source, switched to high energy arsenic bonds too. The arsenic isn't limited to the DNA backbone.

Re:Great

[Samantha Wright]

Wikipedia to the rescue! Answer: it does! Or at least appears to! Adenosine triarsenide! Arsenylation of proteins! Arsenolipid bilayers! You name it, this thing is currently believed to do it!

Just wondering....

[Anonymous Coward]

Is carbon a deadly posion for an arsenic-based life form?

Re:Just wondering....

[Mindcontrolled]

Is carbon a deadly posion for an arsenic-based life form?

Such an arsenic-"based" life form would still be made up mostly of carbon, the arsenic would replace phosphor instead. So, carbon would be most likely harmless to them while phosphor might indeed be toxic, in a reversal of the toxicity mechanism of arsenic, which works, among other mechanisms, by replacing the phosphate groups in adenosine triphosphate.

The really interesting question is how an arsenic-based bacterium would avoid the effect of arsenic binding to sulfhydryl groups in proteins.

Re:Just wondering....

[Yvan256]

Only if you reverse the shields polarity.

Re:Just wondering....

[91degrees]

Would that happen though? Presumably the reason arsenic is poisonous is because it's more reactive than the phosphorous.

Re:Just wondering....

[Atzanteol]

But you'll never be able to alternate the frequencies fast enough to compensate.

Re:Just wondering....

[MozeeToby]

The really interesting question is how an arsenic-based bacterium would avoid the effect of arsenic binding to sulfhydryl groups in proteins.

Which brings up the question of just how different this life is. Did evolution just find a neat little way to avoid the problems with Arsenic or is the biochemistry substantially different at every level? Basically, is this just a new branch off the tree of life, or is it a completely new sapling the next field over?

Re:Just wondering....

[dave420]

And if you don't reroute the encryption, you will be destined to fail.

Re:Just wondering....

[gilleain]

Perhaps its proteins use selenocysteines? Or it produces lots of de-arsenating enzymes, like bacteria that live in very hot temperatures (100 deg, say) produce more HSPs.

Re:Just wondering....

[Megahard]

My guess is that Mono Lake is full of phosphate, so it would have to be able to handle it. Interesting point if it uses "ATA" instead of ATP. And it's got to be loaded with enzymes that work on As, keeping it where it belongs. No doubt many years of research will be spent teasing out this information.

Re:Just wondering....

[godrik]

I don't know.
But shampoo is to nitrogen based ones!

Re:Just wondering....

[Mindcontrolled]

Good question. You usually end up with an equilibrium between the two forms, so if the reactivities are as you say, a phosphorus-based organism would incorporate more arsenic than an arsenic-based organism would incorporate phosphorus. So phosphorus might still be toxic to them, but less so than arsenic to us.

Re:Just wondering....

[tchdab1]

And how far down the list of these questions could the researchers have progressed so far, without publicity?
They probably don't know the answer to many of these yet; we'll see.

Re:Just wondering....

[Mindcontrolled]

If this is a true shadow biosphere in the sense that life developed twice independently on this planet, this would be the biggest news in biochemistry, and probably in all science EVER. I am holding my breath there.

Re:Just wondering....

[careysub]

Would that happen though? Presumably the reason arsenic is poisonous is because it's more reactive than the phosphorous.

No, arsenic is poisonous because it resembles phosphorous enough to get incorporated into the phosphorus-based energy metabolism system in its place, but not similar enough to phosphorous to actually work and produce bio-available energy. It effectively shuts down energy supply, producing waste heat instead.

An enzyme system tuned to rely on arsenic though would overcome this problem.

Re:Just wondering....

[Mindcontrolled]

Yep, phosphorus is so common, they need a mechanism to deal with it, so much is true. Regarding the metabolism, if it is anything less than an ATA based chemistry, I will be severly underwhelmed. After all, arsenic based energy metabolisms, e.g. arsenite -> arsenate based stuff, is known already anyway.

Re:Just wondering....

[Mindcontrolled]

Selenocystein might help indeed. De-arsenation, hm, well - possible mechanism, but kinda underwhelming. If that's all there is, we just have another run-of-the-mill extremophile here. I am hoping for something more exciting, though.

Re:Just wondering....

[Megahard]

So far it doesn't look that great. The article from Astrobiology magazine debates if it's just impurities. And it talks about how "arsenic bonded to oxygen and carbon in the same way phosphorus bonds to oxygen and carbon in normal DNA" which of course is wrong.

Re:Just wondering....

[Mindcontrolled]

I am watching the conference right now, and she just mentioned that they did an elementary analysis of the cells and found not enough phosphorus per cell to have a working biochemistry. So this strongly points to it being more than just impurities, but to a real functional substitution of As for P. Their growth medium was apparently phosphorus-free and the cultures still grew on for quite a while, which again points to a functional substitution.

Re:Just wondering....

[Unequivocal]

Gerald Joyce, a chemist and molecular biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., said the work “shows in principle that you could have a different form of life,” but noted that even these bacteria are affixed to the same tree of life as the rest of us, like the extremophiles that exist in ocean vents.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/science/03arsenic.html

This appears to be bacteria who can knock phosphorous out of their DNA and downstream molecules and replace it with some form of arsenic. Neat trick and probably very useful when surviving in high arsenic low phosphorous environments? But not a new tree of life, just plain old tough-as-a-boot regular life doing what it does best: surviving.

Re:Just wondering....

[Mindcontrolled]

Yep, it is confirmed now in the press conference. This is just a side branch adapted to high arsenic using it as a functional replacement for phosphorus. On a side note, been working at Scripps myself for a couple of months while doing my PhD. Given the current weather around here... I want back there :D

Re:Just wondering....

[Cytotoxic]

She tried to address this in the (public consumption) press conference. Apparently there isn't enough phosphorus left in the medium to explain the growth they see. (like physically counting all of the phosphorus atoms you need and there isn't enough to go around. So "de-arsenating" doesn't cover it.

Re:Just wondering....

[mbuimbui]

carbon would be most likely harmless to them while phosphor might indeed be toxic,

Actually they found that they still thrive with more Phosphorous: From a nytimes article

Despite this taste for arsenic, the authors also reported, the GFAJ-1 strain grew considerably better when provided with phosphorus, so in some ways they still prefer a phosphorus diet. Dr. Joyce, from his reading of the paper, concurred, pointing out that there was still some phosphorus in the bacterium even after all its force-feeding with arsenic. He described it as “clinging to every last phosphate molecule, and really living on the edge.”

Re:Just wondering....

[treeves]

But also presumably there is still more P than As in Mono Lake, even though it contains higher levels of As than most places on Earth.

Can we finally, finally, finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop arguing that life on earth is a special, special snowflake, created by a God who looks just like us? If a deity exists, clearly they are just as likely to be made of arsenic.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Pojut]

In theory, life on this planet is an absurd idea. Think about it: we're on the fringes of the galaxy, out in the boondocks...one of the emptiest, coldest, and darkest part. If anything, life would be most likely to exist closer to the core.

We're not special...we're the exception.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[uncanny]

were you trying to answer his question or just talking?

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[MaWeiTao]

I'd argue that life is more likely where we are for the simple reason that this is where we exist. I would have thought there's a lot more potential for encountering harmful radiation, among other things, closer to the core.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Pojut]

That's also assuming that certain lifeforms wouldn't be resistant (or possibly even immune) to such radiation.

Exactly the kind of thing this discovery means...we now have hard evidence in front of us that what we thought were the rules were completely wrong.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[asadodetira]

Except that may be this saves us from deadly gamma rays from the core

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[ChromaticDragon]

Now, now...

Galactic suburbia isn't quite so bad. Nice and stable. Helps to keep those planetary orbits from changing too much or too quickly. I mean a good wallop a long time ago to create the moon is all well and good. But after a while you just want to settle down. We really don't to get pelted with comets and planetoids all that often.

Things are a lot tougher closer to the core. It's simply much to busy. Nearby stars bustling together. Everybody taking these whiplash commutes around the central black hole. Pesky neighboring stars who keep perturbing your Oort cloud sending debris down on you regularly. Many young stars just cannot handle it. Oh they seem successful; the get nice and big. But they just explode. And let me tell you, you just don't want to live where you could get shot up every few million years or so.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[John Hasler]

> If anything, life would be most likely to exist closer to the core.

Things are a little too exciting close to the core. It's better out here where we can get a few billion years of peace and quiet.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Wonko the Sane]

That's also assuming that certain lifeforms wouldn't be resistant (or possibly even immune) to such radiation.

Keep going with that line of reasoning - the next step would be lifeforms that are dependent on it.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[uncanny]

disregard my comment, i'm pretty sure this isn't where it origionally was

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Deadly to us, sure. Maybe there's some life-form that feeds on them, the way plants feed on other wavelengths.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[lexidation]

Why would anyone mod the parent 'troll'? Are your religious beliefs that easily offended?

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[SWPadnos]

In theory, life on this planet is an absurd idea.

Why?

Are you saying that in theory, life is unlikely?

Are you saying that in theory, life is unlikely here?

What theory actually says this?

Think about it: we're on the fringes of the galaxy, out in the boondocks...one of the emptiest, coldest, and darkest part.

Well, no, not really. We're pretty close to a reasonably warm star. Given the evidence, if seems that our distance from that star is more important than its distance to other stars.

If anything, life would be most likely to exist closer to the core.

Why?

What theory says that being in an area with higher star density would be more conducive to life?

I can formulate several theories to explain why being close to the "core" is worse:

Too much radiation.

Too much heat.

Too high a density of "renegade" objects (like comets and meteors), preventing a stable ecosystem from forming on a given planet. ...

We're not special...we're the exception.

Well, we don't really know that now, do we? :)

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[ShavedOrangutan]

Stop arguing that life on earth is a special, special snowflake, created by a God who looks just like us? If a deity exists, clearly they are just as likely to be made of arsenic.

John 14:2 - In my father's house are many mansions

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Anonymous Coward]

That's also assuming that certain lifeforms wouldn't be resistant (or possibly even immune) to such radiation.

Keep going with that line of reasoning - the next step would be lifeforms that are dependent on it.

Trouble is that's not how life works. Life is basicly just chemicles interacting in a perticular way, and if you change the conditions enough you make it imposible for the same set of chamicles to exibit the behavior we call life.

That's why chemicly alien life would be such a big deal. If it turns out that by changing the conditions enough you can instead of just breaking life for one set of chemicles, you can also make it possible for another set it makes concepts like "life that needs the conditions of the galactic core to live" a real posability not just something a philosphy major made up because they just heard about some extremophile bateria that can tolerate 5% more radiation than some other species of bacteria, and don't know any better (obligatory XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/675 )

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Abstrackt]

I don't think it's absurd at all; I believe life exists everywhere. I believe aliens exist (not little green men per se), that there's some crazy shit living in thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, and that the universe is full of creatures we can't even begin to imagine. And if we are the exception, that most certainly does make us special.

As for the whole creationism debate, I think it stems from the fact that many people don't realize just how special our existence is. On some primal level, it frightens them that somewhere out there there might be something beyond their comprehension and control so they create and believe in a force that's on their side to keep the bogeymen away. The world is scary enough, having to deal with a whole universe of unknowns can be enough to cause an existential crisis.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[rtyhurst]

I for one welcome our new arsenic based overlords.

And intend to drink a toast in arsenic to them in solidarity!

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Philomage]

That's where I would have gone:

Radiation ("harmful" or otherwise) is energy and the whole point of life is utilising energy to rearrange elements to one's benefit - the more energy, the better, if the lifeform can handle it. Anything that could handle all the "harmful" radiation close to the core would have an advantage as a lifeform, but would be fatally "cold" further out from the core.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[AttillaTheNun]

Superman!

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[suso]

What question? I think they were both just talking.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Dunega]

Isn't being the exception the very definition of being special?

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Wonko the Sane]

Trouble is that's not how life works. Life is basicly just chemicles interacting in a perticular way, and if you change the conditions enough you make it imposible for the same set of chamicles to exibit the behavior we call life.

One of the problems is that the concept of "life" isn't really well defined yet.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Stregano]

So you are saying we are the hicks of the galaxy living out in the boonies? Yeah, that is probably pretty accurate

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and stop, then. People like you are the only ones who keep bringing it up anyway.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[not-my-real-name]

Can we argue that God has created life throughout the universe in myriad more ways than we can imagine?

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[SteveFoerster]

Hulk smash!!!

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Doc Ruby]

We're not really in the fringes, nor in one of the emptiest, coldest or darkest parts. Though even if we were, there would still be probably many many other planets with conditions just like ours. Life on Earth proves that life is possible on a planet with conditions like Earth's. Enough planets like Earth means that however small the probability, there will be life somewhere, and no reason to believe that it would be in only one planet. We have no info on whether even one other planet like ours lacks life. There is no reason to believe the Earth is exceptional at all in having life, though there is no reason to believe that it's anything but unique. And the fairly common condition of Earth's place in the galaxy is immaterial. The Earth's conditions are fairly moderate, but there's a vast amount places and a large range of conditions that are also moderate. Without knowing all the critical factors in the development of life on Earth, we don't know how many other places match them, even if they also have other conditions alien to Earth but irrelevant to the presence of life.

Indeed this discovery of arsenic DNA life on Earth means the possible conditions for life on any planet are wider than we previously believed, which is why it is important.

It's not absurd that life exists on Earth, because it does exist. Any absurdity would be in the invalid expectations that life wouldn't exist here.

We might or might not be the exception. All we know for sure is that life certainly exists here. The self-defining nature of that one sure fact tells us a lot about the limitations of our search for life elsewhere.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[alvinrod]

We really can't say as we haven't exactly stopped off to visit other parts of the universe to see what they're like. Everything we assume is horribly anecdotal. What makes sense for Earth doesn't necessarily have to make sense for any number of other worlds where life has sprung up. With so much potential variety across the universe there're bound to be all kinds of things that don't make any sense. We're not special because we're probably only one of some uncountable number of exceptions.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[ShavedOrangutan]

Okay, maybe I lost someone, since that has nothing to do with my quote.

John 14:2 Is Jesus talking about his father, God (assuming you believe that kind of thing). It could be interpreted that God's universe (house) has many inhabitable worlds (rooms).

I think that's cool because of all the closed minded bible thumpers who believe in a 6000 year old planet that is the center of a tiny universe. Nothing in the Bible says God didn't create a bunch of other planets too! (And it certainly doesn't say anything about HOW either.)

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Peter Trepan]

If a deity exists, clearly they are just as likely to be made of arsenic.

Indeed, my experience with organized religion has convinced me that God is most likely poisonous.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[ShavedOrangutan]

Deuteronomy was more a set of laws for the Israelites than anything else, when you get down to the parts about stoning the promiscuous and not eating pork. And yeah, the devout strict interpretation people seem to forget that God didn't write the bible, or the fact that it's been retranslated and revised countless times throughout history.

Check out The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. He tries for a year to follow absolutely everything in the bible, no matter how small or obscure the detail. It's a good read, and really humorous if you've ever been preached to those people.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[johanatan]

Exceptional sounds better than special anyway but they are essentially synonyms no?

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[SilverHatHacker]

No one said anything about looking like us. "In his image" means being the highest form of life on this planet, possessing the power to both create and destroy on a level far beyond anything else we know of.
For that matter, nothing that I know of in the Bible precludes the existence of life elsewhere, man's arrogant interpretations of it do.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[boredsenseless]

The other problem being the GP's spell checker.

Re:Can we finally, finally, finally

[Synonymous Homonym]

life would be most likely to exist closer to the core.

In the Unthinking Depths, protected from the meddlers of the Beyond.

Life on this planet is absurd, because
there is ice on the poles, making the water too frigid for life,
the moon is almost a twin planet, causing instability on the surface, too unstable for life to develop,
the atmosphere is filled with a deadly reactant, oxygen, certain to destroy any complex chemical bonds in exotherm reactions,
it is bathed in deadly radiation from its nearby star,
and there are comets and planetoids in the system that often collide with this planet.
Therefore, life on Earth is impossible.

Possibly to be streamed live here

[objekt]

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

But I don't know for sure.

Re:Possibly to be streamed live here

[nomoreunusednickname]

Yahoo mirror streams (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_TV)

• Low broadband: 150kbit/s
• Mid broadband: 300kbit/s
• High broadband: 500kbit/s
• Full speed: 1200kbit/s

Re:Possibly to be streamed live here

[Stregano]

Nice, the Nasa stream is totally not working. Unfortunately, Yahoo is blocked on my work's firewall.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[Pojut]

::facepalm::

If what's being reported is accurate, they've discovered a life form whose DNA was previously thought to be completely, unequivocally, no-exceptions impossible. Not just "we haven't found it", but impossible.

HOW IS THAT NOT AWESOME???

Contradictory statements

[flogger]

NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth.

This makes it seem as if extraterrestrial life was found. But this was found in Mono Lake, California? So is it Life, as in living? ore life as in "was" living? I'll be tuning in at the conference.

Re:Contradictory statements

[Pojut]

The point was that it means that life could exist in ways we haven't even conceived of yet. It's not the finding itself that's important, but rather confirmation that we don't know dick. The confirmation of such a thing widely expands the possibility of finding life elsewhere, because it is a direct example of how much we could potentially have wrong.

Again, it's not the finding itself that's important, but rather the implications of this type of discovery.

Re:Contradictory statements

[RivenAleem]

It's life, flogger, but not as we know it.

Re:Contradictory statements

[farble1670]

the environment is mono lake is so different (and hostile to life as we know it) that it might as well be ET.

Re:Contradictory statements

[kimvette]

I could have told you before this discovery that we don't know dick.

We pat ourselves on the back, thinking we are so advanced, and yet we have entire classes of people stealing money from those who work to give to those who don't want to, while the genuinely needy and helpless often go without any kind of aid and have to eat garbage and live in cardboard shacks. We engage in wars over really trivial shit, because a few tyrants at the top in each respective country don't like each other very much.

We certainly are primitive and clueless. But, we have our digital watches, and those are a pretty neat idea!

Re:Contradictory statements

[ColdWetDog]

the environment is mono lake is so different (and hostile to life as we know it) that it might as well be ET.

No, you're thinking of Los Angeles.

Re:Contradictory statements

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Well, to be fair, pretty much all of California is so far out at this point that the entire state seems like its own planet that exists in a completely different plane of reality.* ;)

* Disclaimer: I was born and raised in, and still live in, California. As a native boy, I get to poke fun at my batshit-insane state with pride.

They did not find new life

[iron-kurton]

According to Alexis Madrigal, the answer is no. http://twitter.com/alexismadrigal

Re:They did not find new life

[Anonymous Coward]

She also couldn't find her glasses after taking out her contacts. Gotta love the banality of Twitter.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[uncanny]

This one is completely different. Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While she and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth. !

I found this information on another planet (a whole 1 click away!!!)

Better stock up on Head & Shoulders

[Dark Fire]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(movie)

2 fundamental question

[sourcerror]

1, Do they believe in God?
2, Can we have sex with them?

(Yeah, I know, it's a bacteria.)

Re:2 fundamental question

[Digital Vomit]

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll still fit. ;-)

Re:2 fundamental question

[corbettw]

1: Who cares?
2: Rule 34.

Re:2 fundamental question

[Zomalaja]

1, Do they believe in God? 2, Can we have sex with them?

(Yeah, I know, it's a bacteria.)

3. Can we eat them - No, so who cares ?

Re:2 fundamental question

[mastropiero]

4. Can they eat us?

NASA?

[mooingyak]

I'm curious as to what NASA has to do with this, Mono Lake being in California and all.

Re:NASA?

[atrain728]

NASA does a lot of terrestrial research in the Earth's most exotic environments (in order to gather information on possible extra-terrestrial environments).

Still, it would seem that perhaps the name "National Air and Space Administration" should be updated with the times.

Re:NASA?

[demonbug]

I'm curious as to what NASA has to do with this, Mono Lake being in California and all.

Yeah, everybody knows NASA is only supposed to spend money in Florida, Texas, and Utah.

They actually do quite a bit of geomicrobiological research, basically looking for interesting forms of life and resulting geologic structures as a way of informing the extraterrestrial search for life. If you can't even be sure you know the signs of the presence of life on Earth, how are you going to know whether you have found signs of life on Mars?

Composition or respiration?

[Fractal Dice]

This smells of an article that got a little over-excited on speculation. If its just using arsonic as part of its respiration, that's not earth-shaking news - it's already known some bacteria do this.

Re:Composition or respiration?

[geekoid]

Or not.

"Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today"

Evolution

[jellomizer]

From TFA it looks like there is just 1 molecule different. Could it be possible that a Phosphate got replaced by Arsenic by some environmental condition and the fact that they were poisonous to most other life it allowed them to evolve further. A bacteria got lucky it didn't die after a mutation.

Re:Evolution

[Captain Hook]

Thats one possibility, but there is a second possibility which is what I think NASA would be so excited about if true. What if it's not a mutation in Bacteria which used Phosphorus, but a completely seperate lineage of life, with no common ancestor.

If that were true, it doesn't mean it has to be Extraterrestial, it could be direct evidence that life on Earth started at least twice, under different conditions in different places and times. It would have huge implications in terms of how likely life is to start else where in the Solar System/Galaxy/Universe if the environmental conditions are right.

Re:Evolution

[Bones3D_mac]

That's pretty amazing to think about... not just one massive tree of ever evolving lifeforms, but perhaps several competing in parallel with one another throughout history. Completely incompatible strains of life endlessly competing with each other for dominance over resources, potentially altering the environment itself to the point that one strain wins out over the other as the loser is slowly being killed off by same world they once thrived in. Perhaps such competition might better explain some of the more major evolutionary changes in lifeforms, versus the far more subtle evolutionary changes between similar species that can simply be defined as minor mutations that made certain lifeforms slightly more successful at survival than their non-mutated counterparts.

Re:Evolution

[Captain Hook]

Except I was wrong, what NASA actually announced was a Bacteria which could successfully use Phosphuros and Arsenic interchangably in it's DNA structure but most importantly seems to still be part of the same Lineage as all other Bacteria.

Therefore the announcement has no impact on how common life might be because we still only have evidence of live starting once. What it does do is increase the range of environments where we can look for life which isn't quite the ground breaking Astrobiology announcement that NASA pre news release made it out to be.

Is it still carbon-based?

[Pulzar]

For those of us who don't know biology well, what does this really mean? What is phosphorous used for in our cells, and how does arsenic change things? Searching for "phosphorous-based life" comes up with discussiong on phosphorous, silicon, and other elements instead of *carbon*, but these new bacteria are still made of the same carbon building blocks as us, no?

Re:Is it still carbon-based?

[Hyppy]

ATP (cellular energy) is adenosine triphosphate. Arsenic generally works by reacting with this and, essentially, unplugging the fuel tank for cells.

Re:Is it still carbon-based?

[ColdWetDog]

To expand a bit, look up ATP on wikipedia ...

But anyway, Phosphorus is a fairly energetic element (think boom in the appropriate situations). Life needs energy, which at the molecular level is electron flow. ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) is a molecule used buy ALL living life forms (except perhaps the one we shall learn about soon) to transfer electrons and therefore is sort of a biological battery (maybe capacitor is a better analogy) that stores energy for use in the countless chemical reactions involved in life.

Arsenic is close enough chemically to Phosphorus to screw this up, which it's why it is an effective poison. However, since it is chemically quite similar, what evolution has apparently done (and of course, I'm guessing at the moment) is to substitute Arsenic for Phosphorous in the DNA backbone (DNA is made of four "bases" attached to several Phosphorus atoms, the Phosphorus drives a lot of the chemistry that DNA is involved in).

We already know about some little buggers that use arsenic in place of Phosphorus in a few chemical reactions, but nothing apparently this robust. So it's very interesting, but I do not believe that we have to worry about the aliens from Mono lake becoming our new poisonous overlords.

Re:Is it still carbon-based?

[geekoid]

This isn't the time for facts, man. This is the time for wild speculation structured like facts.

Re:Is it still carbon-based?

[ais523]

It'd still be carbon-based, by and large.

The reason people are interested here is that the main very-short-term energy store in the human body - the chemical used to store energy generated by respiration until it's needed - is in pretty much all known life adenosine triphosphate (ATP). (Because the body can't store ATP, it uses chemicals like glucose for typical short-term storage; ATP is used pretty much immediately after being generated.) The way it works is that the chemical's actually stable with just one, or more commonly, two phosphate groups; the extra phosphate groups take energy to attach, and consequently, if a reaction disattaches the groups as a side-effect, it can be driven in the "forwards" direction even if it normally wouldn't. As a result of this, a whole bunch of enzymes in a typical organism are dedicated to trying to split ATP molecules as a side-effect of apparently unrelated reactions. It's quite surprising that an organism has managed to adapt all its ATP-using enzymes to be based on something else (according to the speculation here on Slashdot, presumably an ATP variant that used arsenic rather than phosphorous), given how widespread it is.

The other really interesting use of phosphorous in typical Earth organisms is that DNA and RNA, two of the most important data-carrying chemicals in human bodies, incorporate phosphate in their construction. (They use a base-4 code with about 4 different variants for each nucleotide in the chain; there are 4 main ones, and a bunch of mostly irrelevant variants which pop up now and then; in most animals and plants, DNA is used for long-term storage, and RNA is used to make temporary copies of DNA, with DNA rarely being used directly except to make copies from. Which nucleic acid is used for what is far from universal in "typical" life in general, though.) ATP (with the two extra phosphate groups removed) actually happens to be one of the four possible major nucleotides that makes up RNA, and is used as a feedstock to synthesize RNA and DNA from. A life-form that didn't use phosphorous would be unable to have the same DNA/RNA as the rest of life on Earth, although it might use something chemically similar for the same purpose. I'm personally more interested in how the life-form in question deals with its energy supplies, something that's likely to have ramifications on the entire organism, rather than just on its data storage, even though DNA is rather more famous than ATP.

So in short: you'd expect it to be carbon-based, and many of its chemicals involved would be much the same (using glucose for respiration, etc.; although the organism in question is in such a weird environment that it may well use a different energy source entirely); but it would have to find a different (if only slightly different) way to store energy for immediate use (meaning that most of the enzymes in the body, that actually do something, would need to be different), and it would need to use something other than DNA or RNA to store its genetic code (likely a variant using arsenic rather than phosphorous).

Re:Is it on another planet?

[MaWeiTao]

As far as I could tell nobody thought it was impossible, perhaps unlikely, but not impossible. There are other organisms that already use arsenic in their system, although not to this extent. Scientists have even speculated on boron and silicon as alternatives to carbon.

Re:and?

[Yvan256]

Do they have pre-announced (days in advance) press conferences "all the time" about their other findings?

Obligatory Kent Brockman

[swb]

I, for one, welcome are new arsenic-based overlords.

Obligatory

[Yvan256]

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.

Re:Obligatory

[SleazyRidr]

+1 for the classy Star Trek reference directly following the low-brow Simpsons reference.

*golf clap*

Super Bug!

[Gravitron 5000]

A bacteria that contains arsenic in its DNA. It's some kind of super bug that poisons you while infecting you! Does anyone know of a good supplier of hermetically sealed human sized bubbles?

Re:Super Bug!

[John Hasler]

Does anyone know of a good supplier of hermetically sealed human sized bubbles?

Inquire at your local mortuary. They'll fix you up with a hermetically-sealed stainless-steel coffin.

Re:Super Bug!

[pesho]

If it uses arsenic instead of phosphorus, it can't infect you. Where is the poor bug supposed to get nutrients if it accidentally ends your arsenic deprived flesh?

Still carbon-based

[ArsenneLupin]

This is about a bacterium which replaced its phosphorus (not its carbon) with arsenic. Nothing to see here, move along!

Re:Still carbon-based

[tgd]

There's nothing to see here if it can be shown that there is a sequence of changes that can go directly from point A to point B (A being "life" -- without a firm definition, but "life" using phosphorus, and B being identical "life" using arsenic instead) where every step of the path between forms a viable chemistry that continues to be "life".

If you can't do that, then there's pretty significant reason to think that along with the handful of times life likely arose on Earth with a chemistry that *can* be linked that way to now, it arose a time using a completely different chemistry.

That latter would mean two VERY important things -- the conditions that life could arise in is a lot broader than we believe AND, if its got similar genetics and use of amino acids, that the opportunistic use of amino acids (which are known to be extremely common in space) isn't a rare thing.

This are staggering, dicipline-changing insights unless someone can show a path from A-B.

Re:Still carbon-based

[cnettel]

The proof will probably not be a path, but rather the level of similarities. If the genetic code is indeed arsenic-based, the interesting aspect will be to see what length of matching sequence we can find to existing code. I can buy that amino acids were used in an opportunistic way as a neat solution to generality, flexibility and tendency for chemical reactions. However, if the code is based on three-base codons and if a reasonable amount of those codons match their traditional-life counterparts, then this is a branch of the known tree, no matter how hard it is to conceive the path from A to B. One of the most conclusive indications of common origin of existing life is the shared langugage of the genetic code (with minor differences).
ATP has been mentioned. DNA has been mentioned. Both of these contain phosphorous. However, what will really thrill me is the putative presence of an arsenic-based ribosome. Basically, the protein-synthesis machinery contains strands of RNA, important for structure as well as the catalytic activity itself. Those structures also share clearly identifiable similarities between all existing versions. Popping in arsenic everywhere in that structure would be really fascinating.

Re:Still carbon-based

[MMatessa]

Looks like it's the former instead of latter: "In the laboratory, the researchers successfully grew microbes from the lake on a diet that was very lean on phosphorus, but included generous helpings of arsenic... That makes it very peculiar, though it falls short of being some form of truly 'alien' life belonging to a different tree of life with a separate origin."

Re:Still carbon-based

[martyros]

This are staggering, dicipline-changing insights unless someone can show a path from A-B.

You mean, if someone can prove that there cannot be a path from A-B. Just not knowing how the path could happen is not enough; after all, one of the hobbies of evolution skeptics is finding bits of biological machinery which it's difficult to concieve how they would have developed.

I don't see any difference between saying, "No one can show how arsenic could replace phosphorous [or whatever it was]; therefore, arsenic did not evolutionarily replace phosphorous, it must have spontaneously generated separately" and saying "No one can show how the eye could gradually evolve; a partially-formed eye is completely useless. Therefore the eye did not evolve, it was created". If you allow the first argument you have to allow the second; and if you disallow the second argument, you have to disallow the first.

Besides which, if there are similar amino acids and genetics, then I'd consider that evidence that it did evolve from life as we know it, rather than that it spontaneously generating a second time.

Re:Still carbon-based

[johanatan]

I'd be interested in seeing the path from inorganic matter to A if you hear of one.

Re:Still carbon-based

[tgd]

I'd strongly recommend a book called "Life Ascending" by Nick Lane. Its got a very easy to follow chapter on the most up-to-date ideas behind that. (Which, frankly, are a lot more solid than the vast majority of people -- even people who have been casually following the science -- may know.)

It spells out several paths likely to have done so. (This isn't nearly the mystery the "creationists" seem to think it is ... we may never know how it *actually* happened, but we know ways it *can* happen.)

Re:Still carbon-based

[tgd]

Except how the eye gradually evolved isn't a particular mystery.

Basic chemistry is very different than complex macro structures. If intermediate forms are not alive, you don't move from point A to point B through direct evolution of the trait.

Now, in this case (hours later, now that the announcement has come out), it seems likely that this is exactly that -- a direct shift in chemistry, given the structure of the bacteria matches "normal" bacteria.

Re: DNA and genes -- we know RNA spontaneously assembles itself, so its not at all unlikely that RNA as an information-carrying molecule would arise multiple times.

Had this, in fact, been a case where it was a biologically distinct lifeform at its most basic chemistry *and* it still used RNA (or DNA) then you absolutely need to consider both options. (And given that viruses frequently transplant genes, you couldn't even assume one or the other based on having common genes.)

Mission to Titan

[digitaldc]

Now, we need to send a robot to Saturn's moon Titan and see if life exists there.
Titan's surface temperature appears to be about -178C (-289F). Methane appears to be below its saturation pressure near Titan's surface; rivers and lakes of methane probably don't exist, in spite of the tantalizing analogy to water on Earth. On the other hand, scientists believe lakes of ethane exist that contain dissolved methane. Titan's methane, through continuing photochemistry, is converted to ethane, acetylene, ethylene, and (when combined with nitrogen) hydrogen cyanide. The last is an especially important molecule; it is a building block of amino acids.

Bah...

[andi75]

If it's based on Arsenic, it's probably not edible...

I remember a short SF story...

[pongo000]

...about a lifeform based on silicon, not carbon. Instead of exhaling carbon dioxide, they shit sand (or something like that). Anyone remember the name/author?

Re:I remember a short SF story...

[Krishnoid]

Found it on TV Tropes; "A Martian Odyssey", by Stanley G. Weinbaum.

Re:I remember a short SF story...

[cnettel]

H. Orta, or more properly Gene L. Coon.

Re:I remember a short SF story...

[amliebsch]

There are a number, I believe, because it was based on real theoretical biochemistry. This is the one that came to mind first:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Talking_Stone

Re:Is it on another planet?

[Lord Lode]

I see. I'm not a biologist, but I'd never have said a life form using a different kind of chemistry for its DNA, or even a life form using something completely different than DNA would be impossible. I don't even exclude things such as life forms based on totally different physics, scales of time, scales of size, and so on. We currently don't even 100% know how our own DNA fully works and how it came into existence. So who are we to say that something else is impossible! :)

Actually it's very interesting then, interesting because it'll cause people to think about new possibilities, nice!

For reactions, see the SyFy channel

[Rogerborg]

I 100% guarantee you that they'll be poised to make last minute dialogue chances to whatever Parking-Lot Epic is just about to start filming. Run, Kristy Swanson, the arsenic based blob is after you!

Obvious follow up question

[bytesex]

Are there any more arsenic lakes around the world ?

Re:Obvious follow up question

[vgerclover]

Yes.

most important is whether this new life

[Anonymous Coward]

has a common ancestor with us, or if it emerged entirely separately. If it did emerge separately from the 'spark' which started our family off, then it makes it incredibly more likely that the universe is absolutely teeming with life.

If we find any signs of common ancestory, however far back they are, it would suggest that life only 'began' on this life once, and leaves open the possibility that we are on our own.

Re:most important is whether this new life

[brit74]

No, it's part of the existing tree of life, not a separate evolutionary tree:

The newly discovered microbe, strain GFAJ-1, is a member of a common group of bacteria, the Gammaproteobacteria. In the laboratory, the researchers successfully grew microbes from the lake on a diet that was very lean on phosphorus, but included generous helpings of arsenic. When researchers removed the phosphorus and replaced it with arsenic the microbes continued to grow. Subsequent analyses indicated that the arsenic was being used to produce the building blocks of new GFAJ-1 cells.
(http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html)

It sounds like a phosphorus-based lifeform evolved into an arsenic-based lifeform.

Re:Why NASA?

[leptechie]

One of the core goals of NASA is to discover more about the universe in which we live and how it impacts us. Obviously the search for extraterrestrial life is part of that mission, but if we assume all life (and the planets harbouring them) are identical to our systems then we're going to ignore avenues that might be evident or even more prevalent.
What was a patent clerk doing contemplating the nature of space/time?

Why this is important

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Taking the speculation in the article at face value, and thus assuming that NASA has found an arsenic-based lifeform in a shadow biosphere on Earth, here's why it's important:

All life on Earth that we know of is related. It all uses the same basic DNA/RNA mechanisms (including the same four base pairs), uses the same specific molecules that prominently feature carbon as the basic assembly blocks of the cell, etc. To use the ever-popular car analogy, cars can look quite different from each other, but they're all still essentially made out of the same things: bolts, gears, copper wiring, etc.

Well this other kind of life is completely different. It's so different that we know it cannot possibly be related to all of the other Earth life that we've known about thus far, as there is nothing in common. That means abiogenesis (the spontaneous generation of life from precursor non-living materials) happened at least TWICE on just this one planet.

So while this isn't extra-terrestrial life, it does have all sorts of potential ramifications on the potential existence of extra-terrestrial life. Before today, it was possible to speculate that one solution to Drake's Equation was simply that spontaneous generation of life was so rare that it only happened once, ever. But if we now found that it's happened multiple times just on this one planet ... then hell, it could be happening everywhere, all the time.

Re:Why this is important

[MonsterTrimble]

Amigo, I owe you a beer - that is the best boiled down "Why you should give a fuck' post I've seen in a LONG time. And yeah, it makes me think life around the galaxy is darn near everywhere.

Awesome.

Re:Why this is important

[at_slashdot]

Yes, but the arsenic-based lifeform doesn't seem very intelligent. I mean, assuming that's what it is, we haven't even noticed it till now... no ships to Moon and the like.
Maybe some lifeform cannot simple evolve past some point, they might be irrelevant for Drake's Equation I mean this part: "fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life"

Re:Why this is important

[dkleinsc]

Before today, it was possible to speculate that one solution to Drake's Equation was simply that spontaneous generation of life was so rare that it only happened once, ever.

There are also a lot of people who think that spontaneous generation of life was so rare that it never actually happened, and that life on Earth was created by some sort of Flying Spaghetti Monster. Of course, those guys will think that this evidence is a fabrication by the evil atheist communists.

Re:Why this is important

[modecx]

That means abiogenesis (the spontaneous generation of life from precursor non-living materials) happened at least TWICE on just this one planet....So while this isn't extra-terrestrial life....

I don't know why you jump to that conclusion when it's not possible to concede that either mode of lifeforms came from abiogenesis on this Earth, or that either couldn't be extraterrestrial in origin... It's just as likely that our phosphate based life and this arsenic based life hitchhiked to this rock on other rocks.

Let's face it, it's highly unlikely we'll ever have a hint as to our genesis. Concluding we know anything about the beginning of the story when we know virtually nothing about the rest; well, it's about as silly as the tenants intelligent-design believers hold to be true.

Re:Why this is important

[pesho]

If Arsenic replaces phosphorus and the rest is carbon based it is still very likely for it to be related to the rest of the life forms on Earth. In my view the most significant implication of this is that it can be the base of huge branch of the biotech industry - genetically enginieered bugs that make nasty stuff like biofuels or are used to detoxify industrial waste. The advantage is that it will not grow outside the very limited environment that provides the necessary arsenic. So if you accidentally spill the toxic tank the bug is not going to propagate and contaminate the rest of the world.

Re:Why this is important

[PIPBoy3000]

It could also mean that panspermia happens (life seeding earth), but that there's not just a single type of life floating around in space. I can envision a universe full of bacteria that make their way into assorted planetary niches every once in awhile.

Re:Why this is important

[Philomage]

That's beautiful, man!

/tear

Re:Why this is important

[Anonymous Coward]

All life on Earth that we know of is related. It all uses the same basic DNA/RNA mechanisms (including the same four base pairs), uses the same specific molecules that prominently feature carbon as the basic assembly blocks of the cell, etc.

Hate to bring you down, but from everything I hear, the life isn't "arsenic-based" in the same sense that we're "carbon-based". Instead, all indications are that it's "simply" arsenic replacing phosphorus in the DNA backbone.

As a biochemist, I can almost assure you that the rest of the DNA looks the same. That is, these organisms have the same A/T/C/G DNA bases. I'd guess the (deoxy)ribose sugar part of the sugar-phosphate backbone is the same. It's just the phosphorus in the phosphate has been replaced by the chemically similar arsenic. Anything more extensive would be the selling point, and arsenic would be a secondary (but still important) consideration.

This means that biogenesis only happened once. You aren't going to convergent evolve A/T/G/C with a (deoxy)ribo-chalconide backbone. (That's why they would be the bigger news items.) Instead, what probably happened is that the bacteria started out using phosphorus, and then the enzymes which use phosphorus got "sloppy" and started to use arsenic compounds instead. Since there was more arsenic than phosphorus where they were living, they gradually evolved to use arsenic instead of phosphorus.

Really, really cool. Mind-blowingly awesome, in fact. But not evidence for a seperate abiogeneis, unfortunately.

Re:Why this is important

[Ignorant Aardvark]

I don't know why you jump to that conclusion when it's not possible to concede that either mode of lifeforms came from abiogenesis on this Earth, or that either couldn't be extraterrestrial in origin... It's just as likely that our phosphate based life and this arsenic based life hitchhiked to this rock on other rocks.

Extraterrestrial origin is, of course, even more significant, but my main point was that even if it is homegrown, it still implies two separate abiogenesis events, which is huge. Note that extraterrestrial origin also implies two separate abiogenesis events, of course.

Re:Why this is important

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Hate to bring you down, but from everything I hear, the life isn't "arsenic-based" in the same sense that we're "carbon-based". Instead, all indications are that it's "simply" arsenic replacing phosphorus in the DNA backbone.

As a biochemist, I can almost assure you that the rest of the DNA looks the same. That is, these organisms have the same A/T/C/G DNA bases. I'd guess the (deoxy)ribose sugar part of the sugar-phosphate backbone is the same. It's just the phosphorus in the phosphate has been replaced by the chemically similar arsenic. Anything more extensive would be the selling point, and arsenic would be a secondary (but still important) consideration.

Well darn. I was going off the rather incomplete information as released so far. But we'll know for sure soon enough.

Re:Why this is important

[HeckRuler]

Just as it's impossible to know for sure what you ate last Thursday, there are some telling bits of evidence that let us make informed guesswork that has a degree of probability.

Re:Why this is important

[Rich0]

It's so different that we know it cannot possibly be related to all of the other Earth life that we've known about thus far, as there is nothing in common.

Uh, so far I just see speculation that its DNA backbone is different.

Just the fact that it uses DNA at all makes me think that this has a lot more in common than not.

I think the jury is still out on multiple rounds of abiogenesis. What happens if they sequence its DNA and find out that half of it is sequentially similar to existing bacterial DNA, once you swap out the phosphorous atoms? Certainly you're not going to argue parallel evolution at the sequence level, right?

This is certainly news. However, for all we know some bacteria over time evolved a way to change its DNA chemistry. That isn't independent abiogenesis.

Re:Why this is important

[Mindcontrolled]

Yeah, definitely. Highly unlikely that we are talking independent abiogenesis events here. Still a far out evolutionary path here. If you go for a sugar-arsenate backbone in your DNA, you have to change a whole lot in your metabolism.

Re:Why this is important

[brit74]

To repost a comment I added to another thread: It's part of the existing tree of life, not a separate evolutionary tree. It sounds like a phosphorus-based lifeform that evolved into an arsenic-based lifeform.

The newly discovered microbe, strain GFAJ-1, is a member of a common group of bacteria, the Gammaproteobacteria. In the laboratory, the researchers successfully grew microbes from the lake on a diet that was very lean on phosphorus, but included generous helpings of arsenic. When researchers removed the phosphorus and replaced it with arsenic the microbes continued to grow. Subsequent analyses indicated that the arsenic was being used to produce the building blocks of new GFAJ-1 cells.
(http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html)

Re:Why this is important

[DigiShaman]

Only one way to be sure I suppose. Sequence both forms of DNA and compare the two genomes. If the base genes are the same except for being arsenic or phosphorus based, you may have something in common where evolution took place. If not, and looks completely alien, could be a 2nd genesis of life.

Re:Why this is important

[mbuimbui]

Well this other kind of life is completely different. It's so different that we know it cannot possibly be related to all of the other Earth life that we've known about thus far, as there is nothing in common. That means abiogenesis (the spontaneous generation of life from precursor non-living materials) happened at least TWICE on just this one planet.

Actually it is related (the original bacteria had completely phosophorous in its DNA), the bacteria is not completely different (there are at least 5 elements in the DNA that are the same), and its quite possible that there the DNA is still comprised of some/mostly phosphorous. All that happened was that she took phosphorous based bacteria that was living in an environment already high in arsenic, and removed other phosphorous and added lots more arsenic, and it seems that the bacteria survives, and most probably some of the phosphorous has been switched in the DNA. Perhaps this article will remove some confusion: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/science/03arsenic.html?pagewanted=2&hp

Still that said, that there probably is some arsenic substituting for phosphorous in the DNA at all is quite a revelation.

Re:Why this is important

[mattb112885]

"The advantage is that it will not grow outside the very limited environment that provides the necessary arsenic. So if you accidentally spill the toxic tank the bug is not going to propagate and contaminate the rest of the world."

Unfortunately this is not necessarily true, as the organism also could incorporate phosphorus if it was given some in the media (and not given arsenic). However, it is certainly most likely to survive in the environment it has adapted to (i.e. a high-arsenic environment).

However, I still agree that this could be useful for mediation, since arsenic-laiden DNA, proteins, lipids, etc. may be less toxic than arsenic itself.

Re:Why this is important

[Culture20]

Before today, it was possible to speculate that one solution to Drake's Equation was simply that spontaneous generation of life was so rare that it only happened once, ever.

There are also a lot of people who think that spontaneous generation of life was so rare that it never actually happened, and that life on Earth was created by some sort of Flying Spaghetti Monster. Of course, those guys will think that this evidence is a fabrication by the evil atheist communists.

No, they'll shrug their shoulders and say "hey, look at what else God made". It's nothing beyond a curiosity.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[NoSig]

And more importantly, it would mean end of religions, unless we want to fool ourselves now on new, grandiose scale.

That's exactly what we want.

Call me a pessimist, but...

[vegiVamp]

This will change everything *in scientific circles*. It will change exactly nothing at all in real life.

Fuck, if we were to find not bacteria, but fully-fledged intelligent lifeforms, nothing would change. The vatican and a half-dozen other religions would send missionaries, and half of the world's population would look down at them because they don't have "the right DNA" and that's "against nature".

I honestly don't know what it would take to get those admittedly very natural but in this day and age a bit undesirable instincts out of the majority of the population. Wish I knew.

Re:Call me a pessimist, but...

[chichilalescu]

well, it usually turns out that it's enough to change just the scientific circles. Columbus thought the world was round, and only because of that he wanted to go to sea... that changed things a lot for everyone (think of the potato and corn).
regarding the instincts... please let me know if you find anything.

Re:Call me a pessimist, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knew the world was round. The Greeks even had a good estimation of its diameter. Columbus thought that the earth was much smaller than it really was, and inadvertently stumbled on land that he sincerely thought was India. This is why these continents are named for Amerigo Vespucci, the first man to say "Columbo, you dipshit, this isn't India!"

Re:Call me a pessimist, but...

[east coast]

Columbus thought the world was round, and only because of that he wanted to go to sea...

Can we please please please put an end to this nonsense?

Re:Call me a pessimist, but...

[guybrush3pwood]

It will change exactly nothing at all in real life.

Exactly how is science outside real like?

Re:Is it on another planet?

[DwySteve]

And more importantly, it would mean end of religions, unless we want to fool ourselves now on new, grandiose scale.

How do you figure? I don't recall any religions based on the tenant that arsenic-based life is impossible. Even the Catholic Church's official position on sentient alien life is that there's no reason it can't exist. It just introduces a bunch of largely philosophical questions about whether Jesus's sacrifice was just for us or for all sentient life and whether we have to start proselytizing. Read C.S. Lewis's space trilogy if you want a Christian perspective on alien life.

Never been so excited in my whole life!

[Khenke]

If it is correct that they have found life completely different that have evolved independently from us (and everything else that uses RNA/DNA like us) then this mean that there are 100% chance of life in every corner of the universe (not meaning intelligent life, but I barely call us that so...) with probably hundreds or more different types of life.
The odds of life only evolving on earth in the whole universe are astronomically huge (for me at least), but TWO different independent life types on the same and only place (earth or our solar system depending on where they found it) is "astronomically huge"*"astronomically huge". But then we are playing with almost infinity*infinity=infinity here (in my eyes).

Since I was really young I have always expected us to find a completely different life than us, but that I have Julius Verne to blame/thank for (got hooked on his books at a very early stage).
He learned me to think outside of my own restricted life and accept that (in my eyes) "impossible" things WILL happen, and happen a lot in the future.

Will be VERY fun to hear the religious nuts explain this (not that they succeeded that well with intelligent design with just one type of life).

Re:Never been so excited in my whole life!

[east coast]

Will be VERY fun to hear the religious nuts explain this (not that they succeeded that well with intelligent design with just one type of life).

As a "religious nut" I fail to see the problem here. Can you quote me from any largely accepted religious texts that life only exists on Earth? I'm sure maybe one of them does, it has been a long time since I've read most of the major texts, but at this point you're just coming off as a troll. So I'm calling you out.... show me where it is written in the major texts that no life can exist beyond Earth or that all life must be carbon based.

Re:Never been so excited in my whole life!

[Khenke]

I didn't state that all religious people are nuts, but nuts for me are peeple that:
Kill other people because they have another views
Says that the earth are the center of the universe
That the earth are not more than 4000 years old
Take the bible/koran/and all the other books literally word by word
And oh so more "strange" things like that.

And if you then think you are a religious nut, you are free to call me a nerd/geek/science nut or anything you like.

For me it hard to take religion seriously because over a thousand of years it has stated so many things wrong and still haven't proven one single thing, like science have.

I might be a science troll, but at least I won't get burned/hanged/drowned like in the old good times when the church ruled.

Re:Never been so excited in my whole life!

[Khenke]

Oh, sorry but I forgot about the quote.
Not that interested about reading the whole bible (or another religious book), but I'm quite sure it does mention something about god creating the earth in 7 days and creating Adam and Eve and all earth life.
I must have missed the part of alien life in religious class in school.

I'm quite sure few religious people accept alien life as gods children when they don't accept people without the same beliefs, for reference see Earth (you know all religious wars since the beginning of time). Personally I don't see much difference between religion/churches and nazis, both have been killing other because they are different.

For me it's dirt simple. Either ALL religions are right, there are a god that everyone gets differently, or everyone is wrong. I fail to see how one can be right and all the other wrong.

Re:Never been so excited in my whole life!

[QuantumBeep]

"Religious nuts" of the Christian persuasion usually take the following as indication that Earth is the unique habitation of life:

Isa 45:18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I [am] the LORD; and [there is] none else.

Notice that the verse, in fact, says no such thing. This is why we call them religious nuts.

Re:Never been so excited in my whole life!

[SETIGuy]

If it is correct that they have found life completely different that have evolved independently from us

The would be cool, but it's pretty certain that they've just found a weird relative of ours.

Re:Never been so excited in my whole life!

[east coast]

And if you then think you are a religious nut, you are free to call me a nerd/geek/science nut or anything you like

I really don't know you and I don't know your background but how are you to determine that you're somehow more logic (science) based in reality than what anyone else is? There's a good chance that I give just as much merit to science as you do but at the same time I don't find a conflict between religion and science. Believe me, I do not come to Slashdot to read about comic books...

For me it hard to take religion seriously because over a thousand of years it has stated so many things wrong and still haven't proven one single thing, like science have.

To me, religion is a process. I'm not looking to it to give facts to everything but rather as a guideline towards a lifestyle structure. Almost like how the Buddhist crowd has tenants that they don't believe need to be upheld for someone to be considered Buddhist. And no, I'm not a Buddhist but I do enjoy reading a lot of Buddhist literature. I know it doesn't sound like a concept of religion that most people take to and I know I've explained it poorly. You can critique it as much as you want because it is hard for me to explain but at the end of the day I still consider myself religious.

I might be a science troll

You weren't really talking about science. You were just lashing out at religion for something that I honestly cannot say I've ever heard proclaimed in the accepted texts of any large religion. I still challenge you to find me where the concept of alien life or non-carbon based life is in conflict with religion. That's my thing about the whole religion-science debate.... both sides make really odd proclamations about the other side that simply aren't true. Do you really want to resolve this sticking point? If you do you need to, as a scientific person, drop the meme'ing of religion to the point that it makes you look stupid. Because, frankly, I think it discredits someone who claims to live by the rules of logic to make crap up. Sorry, but that's how I see it.

I would agree with you shouting down those who think the planet is only 6000 years old but I think those people are few and far between in today's world. But that's not what happened here.

I think it's high time that people on both sides of this debate get their heads out of their asses and accept that we're not going to get rid of everyone on one side of this debate with a magic wand and the world is going to come up roses for it. There is no reason for there to even be a conflict, AFAIC.

Re:Never been so excited in my whole life!

[east coast]

Not that interested about reading the whole bible (or another religious book), but I'm quite sure it does mention something about god creating the earth in 7 days and creating Adam and Eve and all earth life.
I must have missed the part of alien life in religious class in school.

Hmmm.... I don't recall the bible mentioning that God created hammerhead sharks but no religious person I know denies their existence. I guess I missed that too.

I'm quite sure few religious people accept alien life as gods children when they don't accept people without the same beliefs, for reference see Earth (you know all religious wars since the beginning of time).

Really? Do you honestly think most "religious" wars have anything to do with religion? Do you honestly believe that? And do you honestly believe that most people who believe in religion have any real interest in killing people from another religion? As a vast majority of people on the face of this planet are religious, our streets would run with blood on a global scale if this were true.

I don't see much difference between religion/churches and nazis, both have been killing other because they are different.

I see you're not much of a student on history either.

For me it's dirt simple. Either ALL religions are right, there are a god that everyone gets differently, or everyone is wrong. I fail to see how one can be right and all the other wrong.

So, if we find that there are two different theories in science either both of them have to be right or both of them is wrong and (since you want to use such a large brush) if either one of them is wrong that means all science is wrong? Do you really think about these things before you say them?

I don't want to be rude about this but you're just as guilty of making up whatever you think should be right and wrong and condemning others for it as the religious people you proclaim to be against. Give me a single logical reason that all religion must be right or if they're not than all of them are wrong?

Re:Never been so excited in my whole life!

[Khenke]

I see that you are on slashdot to talk science (nerd stuff), and not do like most religious poeple, try to push their belief on others, as you are on topic unlike fanatics...

Re:Is it on another planet?

[biek]

Let's pray it happens.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[ColdWetDog]

Well, what you found isn't what you think you've found. You ran smack dab into a press release.

The chance of the press release meaningfully representing the actual occurrence are slim. As has been pointed out, this is likely to be a DNA (the usual base pairs that belong to us) based organism who has replace phosphorus with arsenic. If you look at the two on the periodic table, they are chemically similar.

Yes, it's very significant. Yes it's very important, however it really appears to be 'life as we know it'.

For fans of astrobiology, it gives us one additional data point to say the molecular mechanisms of life are robust enough to work in environments that were felt to be inhospitable. It opens up the Drake equation to a degree, but it doesn't answer the Fundamental Question (which is NOT 'when is the pizza arriving').

Re:and?

[Combatso]

they do if they wanna create hype to get the public interested in supporting a bigger budget

oh come on

[frovingslosh]

That's hard to believe. If a life form based on arsenic did evolve it would have big bulging eyes and its skin would be gray.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[Digital Vomit]

And more importantly, it would mean end of religions

No, it would not. What an incredibly stupid comment to make.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[Remus Shepherd]

::facepalm::

If what's being reported is accurate, they've discovered a life form whose DNA was previously thought to be completely, unequivocally, no-exceptions impossible. Not just "we haven't found it", but impossible.

HOW IS THAT NOT AWESOME???

It's not awesome because we can't eat it, ride it, screw it or go to war with it.

Gimme a carbon-(and phosphorous)-based alien lifeform that we can rally against as they attack our cities anyday. If it looks like Morena Baccarin, that's a bonus.

If true: Every microbiologist in the world...

[wisebabo]

will want to be going to Mono lake and getting samples.

Is there an ecosystem? Predators, Herbivores, Carnivores, Autotrophes etc.? Is the primary energy source the sun or some chemical reaction? How do they keep the "real" biosphere from taking all of there resources (maybe just the high concentrations of arsenic).

In 10 seconds I came up with these questions, and I'm just a wannabe scientist! I'm sure every microbiologist (and geneticist, molecular biologist, systems biologist, taxonomist, etc.) would love to do some field research. If this is the only spot ON EARTH that we know of that these things exist shouldn't we be VERY CAREFUL?! (like treating an extraterrestrial probe).

Of course, that's if this rumor is true. It's beautiful/wonderful to think that it is isn't it?

Re:If true: Every microbiologist in the world...

[SpinyNorman]

A quick Google for "arsenic bacteria" shows that these bacteria from lake Mono were already known to be special since they have an arsenic-based metabolism, so presumably they're already being studied by plenty of scientists.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14537-arseniceating-bacteria-rewrite-evolutionary-history.html

Of course having "DNA" (I guess it needs a new name since it's a new compond) based on arsenic raises the interest level a lot, assuming its true!

Re:Is it on another planet?

[mr_gorkajuice]

Not really.
My religious view doesn't even need to be adjusted to cope with this.
Granted, I'm not saying that Jesus is the son of God, or that Muhammed was a prophet, or that the jews were chosen by God.
I just consider the idea of the universe popping into existance utterly absurd. Just like you consider it absurd that something beyond our understanding may exist, despite the fact that actual scientists are quite well aware that several aspects of the universe are beyond our current understanding.

Religious people might claim a lot of funky shit, but the idea that life should be carbon-based... doesn't that come from science?

Asenic-based lifeforms doesn't shake my faith the slightest.

Medium Rare

[cdn-programmer]

I'll have the arsenic steak please. Medium rare with a backed potato and sour cream and chives.

How much you ask

[Yergle143]

I'm waiting for the announcement. If it is as you say; arsenic in the backbone -> Nobel calling. Nothing mundane about that to a biochemist. It's not, "a totally different form of life" because it would share the same stem but as chemistry it is a big deal.
I'm waiting for the announcement.

Re:How much you ask

[bucaneer]

Didn't say it was mundane. The mechanisms that are responsible for basic molecular biology (DNA replication, transcription and translation of genes, nucleotide synthesis, etc) tend to be exceptionally well preserved across all domains of life, and in this particular case, a big mutation somewhere in there managed to be adaptive, which is extraordinary. This discovery and the inevitable decades of future work on this species from every field of biology/biochemistry is without doubt Nobel material. However, it wouldn't change much of the wider theoretical background about origins of life, evolution and whatnot.

Re:How much you ask

[Cytotoxic]

It is bigger than that. Firstly, arsenic is more reactive and as such the backbone of the DNA would be very unstable. That's a huge problem - how did this organism solve it? That could be a second Nobel prize right there.

Also, although adenosine will bind arsenate to make an arsenic based AMP analog (AMA?), it is the final phosphate from ATP that gets bound in the backbone. You have to have lots of machinery altered to get ATP built with arsenate on the terminus and transport that arsenate enzymaticly into the growing DNA chain. It's been about 25 years since I did biochemistry, but there's about a hundred "holy crap" things about this discovery. Each of those little pieces of the discovery will get you the cover of Science or Nature if you unlock it. Really, this is a super-cool finding. Short of putting ET on the dais I don't know what would be more shocking.

or maybe

[geekoid]

Man walks up to podium: *tap* *tap* *tap* "Is this thing on"

Man: "We all have 2 hours to live."
Man walks off stage.

The article

[geekoid]

says :
" The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth."

hmmm. Technically yes*, but what we look for now is just the very broad basics, which this new life form would still need.

*The best kind of correct.

New life forms based on arsenic...

[JohnRoss1968]

Damn, Im guessing we cant eat them then.....
Guess Ill have to put the BBQ up for the winter then.

Oldish news being confirmed by NASA

[gonpost]

I'm pretty sure this was discovered some months ago...however, these articles don't mention anything about the bacteria's DNA. Perhaps that's the new discovery NASA made. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14537-arseniceating-bacteria-rewrite-evolutionary-history.html http://water.usgs.gov/nrp/highlights/arsenic.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7558448.stm

The chemistry of carbon vs. arsenic

[wfstanle]

I do not claim to be an organic chemist but I did have a full year of organic chemistry in college. There are significant differences in the chemistry of arsenic and carbon. First off, compounds of arsenic would be more metallic in their properties due to its position of being two rows lower in the periodic table than carbon, This would seem to imply that long complex compounds similar to DNA, proteins, etc. would be much more unstable than when you use carbon. Also arsenic and carbon are not even in the same row of the periodic table which means that there are different electrons available to form chemical bonds. All in all, I am doubtful that this report will not withstand closer inspection of the facts. Carbon is unique in its ability to form many different types of chemical bonds. Surely there are qualified organic chemists that should comment on these observations because I might not be accurate in all of my assertions.

Re:The chemistry of carbon vs. arsenic

[theverylastperson]

My understanding is that these would still be carbon based life forms, but would utilize arsenic instead of phosphorus. Then again, everything thus far is speculation. We're assuming it's a single celled life form, we're assuming it's an earthbound life form. Until this afternoon all we really know if NASA is going to announce something that has something to do with life and the search for it elsewhere.

Re:The chemistry of carbon vs. arsenic

[SnarfQuest]

If you look at the article, it isn't the carbon that is replaced, it's the phospherous. The carbon is still there, in all its glory. And they don't tell us if all the phospherous was replaced, or just some of it. Instead of having 4 possible DNA codes, they could have 5. What would it mean if we discover that our DNA has a few arsnic bases hidden away?

Re:Is it on another planet?

[BasilBrush]

So why don't you find the idea of a god popping into existence utterly absurd?

Re:Is it on another planet?

[guybrush3pwood]

My religious view doesn't even need to be adjusted to cope with this.

You have a religious view??? The nerve!!!

Re:Is it on another planet?

[iceaxe]

who said it was impossible..?

In the fine Gizmodo article, author Jesus Diaz states, "...this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible."

Then in the next sentence he contradicts that assertion.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[Aceticon]

And more importantly, it would mean end of religions, unless we want to fool ourselves now on new, grandiose scale.

Your faith (see what I did there) in the capability of your fellow human beings to leave the cozy confines of having a pre-made explanation for everything and venture into the wide open spaces of cold logic is touching if misplaced.

Me, I suspect that the vast majority of them doesn't have the necessary scientific knowledge to even understand the difference between this bacteria and all others and the few that do and are religious will still explain its existence as "God made it".

Considering the number of people out there that don't believe in Evolution even though we observe it every day in bacteria, I highly doubt that "a bacteria that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus" is going cause a religious revolution.

Shades of 'Starfish'

[mfnickster]

Y'all remember that Canadian writer who got convicted of getting beat up at the border, Peter Watts?

He wrote a terrific novel called Starfish (you can read it for free here under a CC license) in which a microbe with non-compatible biochemistry is discovered at an ocean-floor volcanic vent. It metabolized sulfur, IIRC, and the concern was that it would out-compete everything at the bottom of our food chain if it got loose on the surface.

Quick! Let's nuke it from space!

[wonkavader]

Before it spreads.

life using arsenic in place of phosphorous

[SETIGuy]

It looks like the best guess is life (probably bacterial or archaic) using arsenic in place of phosphorous in at least some of its active molecules. Maybe it uses ATA instead of ATP as an energy storage and transfer molecule. Maybe it uses arsenic instead of phosphorous in its DNA. But it's still carbon based terrestrial life. And I'd bet big money that it has evolved from normal phosphate based life, and uses the same triplet codon encoding for amino acids that bacteria do, and uses most of the same enzymes and the same reproduction method.

Someone will probably claim that its a remnant population from when all life was based on arsenic instead of phosphates. They'll need some impressive proof for me to believe that.

"Scientific" press atacks again

[Saija]

look at this gems:
Are Aliens Among Us? Sort of, NASA Says
NASA Finds Alien DNA in Californian Lake
NASA discovery to add new 'element' to life

What about ATP?

[myc]

Phosphorus (or more precisely, phosphate) is used to form the covalent linkages between nucleotide bases in DNA and RNA. You could, in theory, retain the Watson-Crick basepairing of G, A, T, and C while replacing phosphate with something else such as arsenic. That is to say, the nucleotide bases are the bits of information, whereas the phosphate just holds it all together. To use a computer analogy, data is data, whether you store it on a hard drive or a flash drive.

What intrigues me more, is what about ATP? Adenosine triphosphate is not only used for making RNA, but it's also the universal common energy currency for almost all enzymes in all known organisms that catalyze endothermic reactions. If phosphate is not used in this arsenic-based organism, do they still use ATP as an energy source, and if not, what does it use and what kinds of adaptations does it enzymes have to accomodate this?

Re:What about ATP?

[hallucinogen]

Maybe it gets by with proton motive force alone?

Re:What about ATP?

[Mindcontrolled]

They hinted at more than just the DNA backbone and very shortly mentioned ATA in the energy metabolism. That indeed changes a lot of things. I need that paper. Now.

Re:What about ATP?

[Mindcontrolled]

Still need ATA for the backbone synthesis, I guess. And when you have the ATA floating around, you gotta deal with it in the rest of your energy metabolism. I can't imagine having a working energy metabolism with significant amounts of ATA and ATP present at the same time competing for binding spots. That just seems like a huge disadvantage in an evolutionary sense. The proton motive force still drives ATP synthesis - or perhaps ATA synthesis in this situation. I have difficulties thinking of a working system which just would work on the basis of an osmotically driven cytochrome system without an ATP/ATA-synthase to complement it. What would be your proton importing system to drive the cytochromes?

Re:Is it on another planet?

[cbiltcliffe]

And more importantly, it would mean end of religions, unless we want to fool ourselves now on new, grandiose scale.

Ok...seriously....

I've worked with a lot of scientists who claim that the similarity of DNA across all life, and even large sections of chromosomes that are basically identical between such diverse species as humans and mice, are proof of evolution, because it's obvious one developed from the other, and passed on genetic material in the process.

Now, you're claiming that a completely different DNA, totally incompatible with "standard" DNA, where no genetic material could be passed on at all, is proof for evolution.

Admit it. You're just making shit up.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[SteveFoerster]

That's different. In that case, it's turtles all the way down.

Milla Jovavich or Natasha Hendstridge

[Scragglykat]

Personally I'm hoping for Milla when they make a clone from this DNA :o)

Re:Is it on another planet?

[not-my-real-name]

And more importantly, it would mean end of religions, unless we want to fool ourselves now on new, grandiose scale.

Why would it mean the end of religion? All it would mean is that God is even more creative than we had previously though.

Arsenic and old earth / Washington Post

[Doofus]

The Washington Post has a story on the finding, Second Genesis on Earth?

quoting:

But now researchers have uncovered a bacterium that has five of those essential elements but has, in effect, replaced phosphorus with its look-alike but toxic cousin, arsenic.

News of the discovery caused a scientific commotion, including calls to NASA from the White House and Congress asking if a second line of Earthly life has been found.

A NASA press conference Thursday and an accompanying article in the journal Science, gave the answer: No, the discovery does not prove the existence of a so-called "second genesis" on Earth. But the discovery very much opens the door to that possibility, and to the related existence of a theorized "shadow biosphere" on Earth--life evolved from a different common ancestor than all that we've known so far.

Re:Arsenic and old earth / Washington Post

[ColdWetDog]

I'm not sure this opens the door to the 'shadow biosphere' much. From a mechanistic and energetic viewpoint, it just shows that you can replace one important, reactive element with another (disclaimer - the devil may be in the details, we really don't know much at this stage - not like that is stopping us).

What it appears to do is give us a bit more leeway in describing conditions that carbon based / nucleic acid based life can form and thrive. I would be most surprised if this turns out to be anything but a previously based phosphorus based organism evolving into using arsenic.

They, however, are certainly keeping the fun details close to their vests.

Re:Arsenic and old earth / Washington Post

[ColdWetDog]

Grrrr. This whole thing seems to be a bit hyped. What they've found is a bug that can live in high concentrations of arsenic BUT requires low concentrations of phosphate. They don't describe the molecular biology at all (at least on the Fox news blurb).

They're throwing this out as a pitch to start opening up their exobiology programs to look for other things other than your garden variety life forms. Gee. SF authors have been pitching this for decades and I'm sure that the NASA teams launching the Mars / Titan probes would be perfectly happy to start enlarging the scope of their experiments if maybe, they were given some half decent funding.

You got the money, honey, I've got the time.

Which begs the question...

[Motard]

Could a proliferation of the arenic loving life forms cause a problem for those of us who like our phosphor? Could this lead to a war? And who would the good guys be?

Re:Which begs the question...

[Mindcontrolled]

Well, if someone comes after my biochemistry, I am damn sure that I am the good guy here. Because, after all, this is MY biochemistry, there may be many more like it, but this one is mine... Besides, arsenic is rather rare outside of very special environments, so any arsenic specialized life form is more or less confined to environments like Lake Mono. We phosphorus guys just outcompete em out here - by miles and miles.

Really important question

[SnarfQuest]

Why is everyone ignoring the realy important question? What does it taste like?

We need something that doesn't taste like chicked.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

He didn't say it wasn't awesome, he said it'd be more interesting if it was found on another planet. And, guess what... he's right!

It's really cool that we can find life thriving in extreme environments in diverse ways here on this planet. It really gets the imagination going! But those lifeforms moved in after sufficiently growing in a more habitable place. The dice can be rolled a lot more often here on Earth than on Europa or any other body.

It's neat, but it's not 'awesome' until we see this life somewhere besides Earth.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[H0p313ss]

That's different. In that case, it's turtles all the way down.

Nonsense, yesterday we determined that it's lawyers all the way down.

As a microbiologist

[hallucinogen]

I'm looking very forward to this announcement! Perhaps arsenic replaces phosphorus in this microbe's DNA backbone? That would be way cool! Then even more interesting would be, how this little fellow compares phylogenetically to archaea and bacteria (my wild guess is that its 16S and 23S rDNA sequences will much resemble those of proteobacteria). Or maybe it'll have no ribosomes (and doesn't show protein synthesis) at all? Perhaps it's the first cellular RNA lifeform discovered! That would be the sweetest thing ever, as it would pretty much "prove" RNA world hypothesis correct!

Re:As a microbiologist

[Mindcontrolled]

Watching the conference right now - they indeed found a bacterium with sugar-arsenate backbone in its DNA. Way cool indeed. No talk about sequence data yet, I guess they'll save that for the next couple of papers. Basically they took a mud sample from Mono Lake and cultivated it in a completely P-free and As-rich medium, found bacteria and found the As in the genomic DNA. That's all I got for now, they talk too much for the press, wish I could hear a proper talk on it now... :D

Re:As a microbiologist

[hallucinogen]

I'm watching too (obviously). As usual I was right. Now I just want to hear about its phylogeny. If it wasn't related to other bacteria they would have said it already (and not call it bacterium to begin with). Anyways super cool!

Re:As a microbiologist

[Mindcontrolled]

Too bad I do not have online Science access any more. Gotta haul arse to a library tomorrow to get my grubby hands on the new issue.

On a side note, I am quite amused having a discussion between a biochemist named "mindcontrolled" and a microbiologist called "hallucinogen" here... :D

Re:As a microbiologist

[hallucinogen]

Looks like I was right on the proteobacteria part too. w00t!

Re:As a microbiologist

[Mindcontrolled]

Hehe, good guess indeed. Then again - those guys are known for a lot of wierd metabolism :D

Organism Laboratory-adapted to Arsenic

[Guppy]

From the New York Times Summary:

Scientists said Thursday that they had trained a bacterium to eat and grow on a diet of arsenic, in place of phosphorus

It seems that this organisms was adapted in the lab to substitute Arsenic for Phosphorous, and is not a naturally Arsenic-based lifeform -- and that it will still preferrentially use phosphorous when allowed any.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[SecurityGuy]

Wait, so the deal is that mankind was wrong about something?

In that case, the response shouldn't be "Awesome!", it should be "Oh, again?"

Re:Is it on another planet?

[Anonymous Coward]

That thing you're listening to... it's the sound of a thousand segfaults in Mr. Gorkajuice's neurons.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[camperdave]

And more importantly, it would mean end of religions, unless we want to fool ourselves now on new, grandiose scale.

It would not end it in the least. Religion is about a person's soul, not their body. "The spirit gives life. The flesh counts for nothing."

Watch it Live

[Palmsie]

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Re:Is it on another planet?

[CatsupBoy]

::facepalm::

If what's being reported is accurate, they've discovered a life form whose DNA was previously thought to be completely, unequivocally, no-exceptions impossible. Not just "we haven't found it", but impossible.

From the NASA article, according to Carl Pilcher, this was already thought possible: "Until now a life form using arsenic as a building block was only theoretical, but now we know such life exists in Mono Lake."

Re:Is it on another planet?

[bzipitidoo]

If what's being reported is accurate

But that's the big reason for skepticism. We know all about the media's tendencies to dramatize stories, and get crucial facts wrong. They would happily rush to report the discovery of perpetual motion if it was presented with suitably mysterious jargon and enough big names to seem credible, without understanding it is impossible, nor realizing how that'd turn life on its ear if it was possible.

previously thought to be ... impossible

Oh really? More drama. There's far too much unknown to make statements like that with any confidence. What is really necessary for life to arise? Perhaps just Universal Computation? I would be very hesitant to declare that some elements can't support life, not with so much still unknown about even relatively simple chemistry. For instance, Buckyballs were unknown until recently. Some combinations of molecular boron are still being studied. Examination of anomalies in the behavior of Earth's mantle lead to the discovery of post-perovskite, a fairly simple mineral, in 2004, just 6 years ago. Findings like that show how much we still have to learn.

Still, a finding of something that just might be a whole new branch of life, as we now recognize Archaea is, is big news, if it checks out. Remember the brouhaha over possible "nanolife" on Mars when structures in ALH84001 were misinterpreted? No need to trot out words like "impossible", as if the news wasn't dramatic enough! Overuse and misuse reduces the impact of the words.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[shutdown -p now]

I, for one, welcome our new arsenic-based Supreme Beings!

The biggest discovery since Darwin.

[w0mprat]

When they discovered Darwin they were suprised. Chipped him out of a sedimentary layer.

I'm rooting for you NASA!

[pizzach]

Screw open source. You can copyright this arsenic being and live on forever even without government funds, NASA. T^T [/end silliness]

Re:Is it on another planet?

[thehodapp]

Most major religions do not contend that a God "popped" into existence. God is not part of existence. God is outside of existence. Therefore your statement is completely correct (according to my very fragmented logic).

Re:

[JoeThoughtful]

It's the end of defining life as we know it and I feel fine!

From the TV Announcement

[obender]

There's still phosphorus in the cells, just too little. It's not like arsenic completely replaces phosphorus.

It's an adapted version of KNOWN life

[RasmusW]

There has been quite a bit of discussion here, on the possibility of this being a completely new type of life (no common ancestor with other life). That would have been mind-boggling amazing indeed - but from what I read, it sounded much more likely that what they found where an more or less ordinary microbe that have substituted phosphorous the chemically similar arsenic (and still have the same nucleic acids, base-pairing, ribosome, protein synthesis etc).

Looking at the press release from Nasa, this is indeed the case:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html

The newly discovered microbe, strain GFAJ-1, is a member of a common group of bacteria, the Gammaproteobacteria. In the laboratory, the researchers successfully grew microbes from the lake on a diet that was very lean on phosphorus, but included generous helpings of arsenic. When researchers removed the phosphorus and replaced it with arsenic the microbes continued to grow. Subsequent analyses indicated that the arsenic was being used to produce the building blocks of new GFAJ-1 cells.

It's still amazingly cool, but life as we know it is not falling apart =)

Just to be clear...

[brit74]

This isn't a new form of life, as some (including the Slashdot title) have suggested. This is a form of life that can use phosphorus or arsenic in it's DNA and RNA backbone. It evolved from a common type of bacteria that uses only phosphorus. Quotes:

NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

The newly discovered microbe, strain GFAJ-1, is a member of a common group of bacteria, the Gammaproteobacteria. In the laboratory, the researchers successfully grew microbes from the lake on a diet that was very lean on phosphorus, but included generous helpings of arsenic. When researchers removed the phosphorus and replaced it with arsenic the microbes continued to grow. Subsequent analyses indicated that the arsenic was being used to produce the building blocks of new GFAJ-1 cells.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html

Reuters:

The GFAJ-1 strain of the Halomonadaceae grew when arsenic was in the water and when phosphorus was in the water, but not when both were taken away.

"This organism has dual capability," Paul Davies of NASA and Arizona State said in a statement.

"It can grow with either phosphorous or arsenic. That makes it very peculiar, though it falls short of being some form of truly 'alien' life belonging to a different tree of life with a separate origin."

But it does suggest that astrobiologists looking for life on other planets do not need to look only for planets with the same balance of elements as Earth has.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101202/sc_nm/us_arsenic_bacteria

Microbe with Arsenic

[shuz]

The microbe discovered by Felicia is life that is adapted to Arsenic and can substitute P for As but has not yet been found to be entirely As. So it would be more appropriate to explain that this microbe is made from H C N O P As S. This is not a Microbe based on Arsenic.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[Tsiangkun]

Still carbon based life. This is about the phosphorus in the backbone of DNA and high energy particles like ATP being replaced with arsenic. A non carbon life would use Si instead of C for example. In the wild these bacteria use phosphorus. In the lab they prefer phosphorus, but can be forced to use arsenic.

Not the same thing

[edawstwin]

Because "God" (whatever form that may be) will always be unexplainable. "God" could be any one of the gods from any religion that supports a Creation, or just some guy in a much different universe that spawned this one by swatting a fly or smashing atoms in a super-collider. I think the gist of a God (at least in Christianity and Judaism) is that He/She/It created this universe and is therefore outside of this universe. We'll never now what happened or happens outside of it. We should be able to understand everything within our own universe, given enough time and resources (thousands to even billions of years from now). So saying that our universe didn't just pop into existence is perfectly valid. Something caused it to happen, and if you believe in the Big Bang, it can't have come from our universe because there was no "before" the Big Bang. Whatever that something is, is God. Since we can't know the laws of the universe in which this God resides, we don't know if He/She/It popped into existence there, was just some random act, or has always existed. As hard as that last concept is to grasp, we can't rule it out completely since we can never understand that universe.

Re:Not the same thing

[BasilBrush]

In other words, theists are very confused, illogical people.

Whatever "outside our universe" is supposed to mean, it doesn't get away from the issue:

1) This universe either always existed or was created.
2) The thing clled "god" either always existed or was created.

You can't possibly solve any disbelief that the the universe "popped into existence" by invoking something else that created it. It doesn't lead anywhere closer to the answer of where it all started.

As another poster reminds us, Pratchett satirised this wooly theological thinking with the line: "It's turtles all the way down".

Re:Not the same thing

[edawstwin]

If the universe that created ours has exactly the same laws of physics, then you can argue that it turtles all the way down. Otherwise, maybe it doesn't. Maybe that universe has always existed.

Re:Not the same thing

[VJ42]

Pratchett satirised this wooly theological thinking with the line: "It's turtles all the way down".

As much as I love Terry Pratchett, he didn't invent or popularise the concept of "Turtles all the way down" I don't think that line is even in any of the Discworld novels as the great A' tuin is swimming through space (destination unknown) right from the colour of magic; in one of the books we see baby world turtles, but none of them stand on each other...

Furthermore, ask any honest cosmologist and he'll tell you that at our current level of understanding the universe is turtles all the way down, or more accurately turtles all the way out and turtles all the way back; they're just standing on the big bang. Underneath that there are just more turtles. Eventually we'll hopefully be able to eliminate the turtles, but for now we still have a turtle problem.

Re:Not the same thing

[BasilBrush]

Maybe this universe always existed.

One sure thing...

[edawstwin]

... is that tourism is sure to go up in the area.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[BasilBrush]

Gobbledegook.

Re:Is it on another planet?

[NastyGnat]

So in a hundred million years when all that's left of humans are fossil records and arsenic and silicon based life forms are all that is left, will those silicon beings argue that there was no intelligent design and laugh about how HAL rode around earth on humans?

Re:Is it on another planet?

[VShael]

Because human beings stating flat-out that something is impossible, only for Nature to say "Fuck you, human", is more common than you think.

It's only less common today because we're not quite as arrogant as we used to be.