Mysterious bacterium in California: arsenate-based life

HuskerNLimbo said:
I think this is still a HUGE discovery in the scientific world.
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You're right, and I agree with that. It's a big deal! But it's not quite as magical as I first imagined when hearing about it, which makes it just a tad of a drop for me, from that initial excitement anyway. It is still a big deal.

Ars Technica probably covers this the best short of the original paper.

By the way, you may not necessarily be accusing them of this knapp, but I don't think the biologists were ruled by dogma, or this paper would not be out there. It wasn't some chance discovery, but rather a scientist or two wondering, since arsenic is similar in all these ways to phosphorous (being its downstairs neighbor on the periodic table), could it potentially be used as a substitute? There were reasons to suspect that it couldn't, but there was also the idea that maybe some bacteria magically can have some way to compensate for it. They went and tested this and as it turns out, that's right. The exact mechanism of how it happens is not understood though, and would make for fascinating research.

Step 1) Think something is possible. Step 2) Find evidence that it's possible. Step 3) Understand what is going on. We're at Step 2 now and I think that's a pretty significant milestone. It's like all the tests for these hypothetical subatomic particles that they build giant atom smashers for. What kind of things might exist have been speculated about and wondered on and imagined for a long time, but it will still be a huge deal and a huge surprise if/when something is really found.

Basically...

but that doesn't change the fact that we're mostly anticipating life to resemble us, and that's not a given.
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We aren't, and it's just that we haven't found anything otherwise yet, don't know what's out there or how anything works, but are always trying to find out.

 
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I'm talking about the scientific community as a whole, not just these two. "Dogmatic" may not have been the best word to use. Maybe "hidebound" or "stubborn" would have been better. To use your three-step process, I'm saying they may have gotten to step 1 faster had they thought outside the box earlier.

It's about a 0.66 of a concern on a scale of 1-10 for me, though. Just a thought that popped into the noggin.

 
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b23/shortgamer/1196148194136zl8.gif

This kind of puts things in perspective. It takes about 30 seconds to run.

I think this is huge. If even to only open some minds. We have little idea what possibilities are out there. This would seem to go against what is assumed to be necessary for life to exist. It's a substitution of similar elements, yet it wasn't thought to be possible.

Sometimes it's hard to find something specific, but if your just looking for something, without expectations, you can find anything.

It would be great if some form of life that we recognize were to be found on Europa or Gannymeade, somewhere relatively close. That would open the door to more exploration and global cooperation.


I don't think humans will ever be ready for an Independence Day-like visitation. Sometimes I think we are going the Idiocracy route. Great premise for a movie, and some really funny parts, I just can't go 2 thumbs up.
 
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im with you knapp.

simple history of our own periodic table shows you know exactly sh#t about what is all out there. they added a whole new row at one time for crying out loud.

i guess i look at it this way. our periodic table, and how we understand it to work, has been formulated over a couple HUNDRED years.

put that against the timeline of what we think to understand earth to be, and it becomes rather insignificant if you ask me. hell, its super tiny ticks on a clock when most thought the earth was flat not so long ago.

 
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knapplc said:
The first part, of course, is based on conjecture, but "backed up" with probability. There are so many galaxies out there. So many stars.
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Conjecture and probability suck. I want evidence.

 
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Troll or religious nut ?

 
LOL, "cell phones weren't predicted in the Bible" :)

To give an update on this, it seems there's actually been some doubt cast on the quality of the research that was done. NASA could have jumped the gun here and if it's ultimately discredited, have some egg on their face.

Edit - I was going to go search for a link, and just saw that it had already been posted. Oooooh, scientist fight!

Would not be surprised if the original stuff was way too rushed/shoddy, but I haven't ready any of the details here. The whole paper (the original one) was just a couple pages long if I recall, and it seems they were letting the hype get away from this from the beginning.

Then again, maybe it's the counter-paper that is flawed here. We'll see!

 
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In reality, I think the tests were flawed.

They started the medium with a solution consisting mainly of phos compounds and then replaced the P with As in those compounds...Arsenic compounds fall apart quickly in water, so if it really was in the microbe's genes, it should have broken down into much smaller fragments. But the DNA remained in large chunks—presumably because it was made of durable phosphate.

When the NASA scientists took the DNA out of the bacteria, for example, they ought to have taken extra steps to wash away any other kinds of molecules. Without these precautions, arsenic could have simply glommed on to the DNA.

The NASA scientists were feeding the bacteria salts which they freely admit were contaminated with a tiny amount of phosphate. It's possible that the bacteria eked out a living on that scarce supply.

The Sargasso Sea supports plenty of microbes while containing ~300 times less phosphate than was present in the lab cultures.

It is interesting/amazing though how many of you are thinking so far out of the box (which my natural tendancy is to admire)..

BUT!!!!

You're ignoring some of the more practical uses of a discovery like this..like..Engineering an algae that can consume a hazardous waste that is a byproduct of the circuit-board industry all the way down to copper and lead mining/refining.

 
HUSKER 37 said:
In reality, I think the tests were flawed.

They started the medium with a solution consisting mainly of phos compounds and then replaced the P with As in those compounds...Arsenic compounds fall apart quickly in water, so if it really was in the microbe's genes, it should have broken down into much smaller fragments. But the DNA remained in large chunks—presumably because it was made of durable phosphate.

When the NASA scientists took the DNA out of the bacteria, for example, they ought to have taken extra steps to wash away any other kinds of molecules. Without these precautions, arsenic could have simply glommed on to the DNA.

The NASA scientists were feeding the bacteria salts which they freely admit were contaminated with a tiny amount of phosphate. It's possible that the bacteria eked out a living on that scarce supply.

The Sargasso Sea supports plenty of microbes while containing ~300 times less phosphate than was present in the lab cultures.

It is interesting/amazing though how many of you are thinking so far out of the box (which my natural tendancy is to admire)..

BUT!!!!

You're ignoring some of the more practical uses of a discovery like this..like..Engineering an algae that can consume a hazardous waste that is a byproduct of the circuit-board industry all the way down to copper and lead mining/refining.
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kind of like when i dont take precautions to avoid cooking my chicken nuggets in the microwave? :dunno

 
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