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Arsenic-munching germ redefines 'life as we know it'
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A strange, salty lake in California has yielded an equally strange bacterium that thrives on arsenic and redefines life as we know it, researchers reported on Thursday. The bacteria do not merely eat arsenic -- they incorporate the toxic element directly into their DNA, the researchers said.
The finding shows just how little scientists know about the variety of life forms on Earth, and may greatly expand where they should be looking for life on other planets and moons, the NASA-funded team said.
"We have cracked open the door to what is possible for life elsewhere in the universe," Felisa Wolfe-Simon of the NASA Astrobiology Institute and U.S. Geological Survey, who led the study, told a news conference. The study, published in the journal Science, demonstrates that one of the most notorious poisons on Earth can also be the very stuff of life for some creatures.
Wolfe-Simon and colleagues found the strain of Halomonadaceae in California's Mono Lake, formed in a volcanic region and very dense in minerals, including arsenic
"There is an organism that dominates that environment by feeding off an essentially inexhaustible source of energy -- radiation," said Tullis C. Onstott, a geoscientist at Princeton University who led the team. "The bottom line is: Water plus rocks plus radiation is enough to sustain life for millennia."Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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Kalonji your example of extremophiles are certainly exotic feeding off radiation.. there is one thing that they did not have.. this for Dna It grew and it thrived and that was amazing. Nothing should have grown," Wolfe-Simon told a news conference. "We know that some microbes can 'breathe' arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new -- building parts of itself out of arsenic." Read more: http://egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=recent#ixzz177DO1atLPosts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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This is NOT an example of new life. New life would use a non-DNA molecule to replicate and repair itself. This is an extremophile that has adapted to very high Arsenic and very low Phosphorus levels. The microbe replaces SOME of the Phosphate bonds in DNA with weak Arsenate bonds that dissolve more readily in water compared to Phosphate bonds which explains why the Arsenic adapted microbes are bloated(to partition water) and grow slower than normal bonded DNA microbes.
Posts: 644 | Registered: May 2010
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NonProphet This is NOT an example of new life. New life would use a non-DNA molecule to replicate and repair itself. This is an extremophile that has adapted to very high Arsenic and very low Phosphorus levels. The microbe replaces SOME of the Phosphate bonds in DNA with weak Arsenate bonds that dissolve more readily in water compared to Phosphate bonds which explains why the Arsenic adapted microbes are bloated(to partition water) and grow slower than normal bonded DNA microbes.
Paul Davies of NASA and Arizona State said the bacterium is not a new life form. "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," he said.
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