Genome of Controversial Arsenic Bacterium Sequenced

Med-trump writes "One year ago a media controversy was ignited when Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues held a press conference to announce the discovery of a bacterium that not only survived high levels of arsenic in its environment but also seemed to use that element in its DNA. Last week, the genome of the bacterium, known as GFAJ-1, which gets its name from the acronym for 'Give Felisa a Job.' (No joke!), was posted in Genbank, the public repository of DNA sequences for all who care to take a look. But it doesn't settle the debate over whether arsenic is used in DNA."

Comments

Of course it isn't a joke

[ByOhTek]

We geneticists come up with some of the most goofy names for genes.

Smaug is a fun one.
So is "MADD", which stands for "Mothers Against Dumpy Drosophela"

Re:Of course it isn't a joke

[jinushaun]

Don't forgot Sonic Hedgehog (SHH), an important protein used in development.

Re:Of course it isn't a joke

[mwfischer]

I googled Mothers Against Dumpy Drosphela and this site came up.

http://jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu/genes.html

You people are strange. I like you.

Re:Of course it isn't a joke

[Niedi]

Anything that involves Drosophila in gerneral and especially Christiane Nüsslein Vollhard is just plain silly....
examples (along with the translation if necessary)
Spätzle (a swabian kind of noodle), wingless, toll (either great or crazy), Gurke (cucumber), tube, Pelle (husk/peel), Krüppel (cripple) etc....

Basically they tried to destroy/deactivate/mutate random genes necessary for the development of the fly, without knowing what they'd hit. Then they looked for larvae or flies that looked weird or behaved funky and named them with whatever they associated with it. Finally they took the animal and tried to find the gene they deactivated. If successful, they'd give that original name to the gene, no matter how stupid the name was and no matter how important the gene is. Hilarity ensued.

Re:Shouldn't it be fairly simple to determine that

[neonKow]

It seems like someone is trying to do exactly that:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/02/9168255-arsenic-life-debate-still-percolates

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the linked article seems to suggest that the problem has been that no one else has tried to replicate the experiment until now.

Re:Shouldn't it be fairly simple to determine that

[geekoid]

If only they had thought of that~

"Redfield has sent purified DNA samples to collaborators at Princeton University for mass spectrometry analysis — to see whether any arsenic was really taken up into the molecular structure. "We just got the DNA from Rosie Redfield," one of those collaborators, Leonid Kruglyak, told me this week. A graduate student in Kruglyak's lab, Marshall Louis Reaves, is currently working out the protocols for analyzing the DNA."

Re:Well, she got the job.

[geekoid]

The paper was fine. Her handling of some of the samples may not have been what one would want.
The sensationalism is the problem. Her conclusion, while unexpected and quite possible wrong, are fine based on the experiment.
This will be worked out like science is worked out. People will try to recreate it, and the DNA will be put under a Mass Spec.

All of which is in the article.

Shit. I just realized you posted AC. So, you are crap. Normally I don't bother with AC, but since I wrote it, I'll post it.

Re:Shouldn't it be fairly simple to determine that

[Hatta]

They know that this bacteria lives in an environment of Arsenic and may use it in its cell process. So any Spectrometric study will show Arsenic as contamination.

What matters is whether the arsenic is covalently bound to functional groups like adenosine, which mass spectrometry is able to detect.