New bacteria redefines life as we know it

[Reach]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

It's interesting. It's not entirely earth-shattering though. These conditions were artificially induced and decreased cell functionality. Arsenic is known to take the place of phosphorous in chemical reactions, and consequently this is why it's poisonous.

Really, this study just goes to show you how flexible life can be across a broad range of conditions, especially extremophiles! But in reality, we already knew that.

[Andrew Mitchell]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

reach for the dettox

[MixMasterLar]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

I'm with Izzy on this: Hopefully there's something we can get out of this...

[Reach]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

So I spent the last little bit reading through parts of the actual paper.

If you read the paper and not the news articles, there are some problems. I did part of my undergrad in biochemistry and molecular biology, so I can comment on this a little bit.

The results suggests that arsenate replaced phosphate in certain conditions. There's however, no evidence this replacement took place in biochemically active DNA/RNA involved in transcription/translation. As such, the incorporation could be biochemically redundant. They need more evidence.

Arsenate resembles phosphate structurally, which is why it can take its place chemically. However, it's known to be completely unstable in water. It quickly hydrolyzes (decomposition via reaction with H2O). Instability suggests less than ideal conditions for ever composing biochemically active DNA strands.

Interestingly, in the experiment water is completely removed. If the conditions were similar to any natural conditions on earth that contained water, there would have been no results. This is specious at best.

As such, I would argue there is a lot of additional research that needs to be done on this subject before we can draw any serious conclusions (which also appears to be the view of the authors of the paper). These organisms could just be storing the arsenic to avoid toxicity, which would also explain the increases in size. Another implication here is that for this to be chemically practical you would need to generate conditions on another planet without water that is high in arsenic but low in phosphate. This is rather unlikely; phosphorous is much more abundant than arsenic. I suppose anything is possible though.

[ninjaKIWI]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

Before we get a bunch of misdirected rebuttals I just want to say no one has really made that claim. ("Can be used to change all life as we know it.")

New bacteria redefines life as we know it

?_?

[Punk Kitten]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

Ah, the idiocy of people on FFR... never gets old.

Can't appreciate a good find, always gotta complain about some other **** that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. I'm with OneHandNow. It would be badass to have arsenic in my DNA.

Marry me.

[who_cares973]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

lmao you want to marry nyokou

[Reincarnate]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

The results suggests that arsenate replaced phosphate in certain conditions. There's however, no evidence this replacement took place in biochemically active DNA/RNA involved in transcription/translation. As such, the incorporation could be biochemically redundant. They need more evidence.

I didn't read the paper yet out of apathy, but this is interesting to know -- this was exactly what I had been wondering about.

[XCV]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it



I'd wondered where this came from.

[Quigly]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

They need to find the cure to cancer. That should be number one priority. =/

Besides...Nasa...

Should be also looking for other planets to live on. What's with this ****?

So then every scientific discovery that isn't the cure for cancer is thus rendered useless. Okay.

As for the NASA comment, how the **** are you 24 ahahaha.

[Reach]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

I just found this blog where people with much higher degrees than me comment on and vastly expand on the problems in this paper that I brought up:

http://scienceblogs.com/webeasties/2010/12/guest_post_arsenate-based_dna.php

[Reincarnate]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

fffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuu

[rushyrulz]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

lol, I overheard some guy talking about this at school today. He was using it as a point to prove evolution and disprove God. Right on!

[Reincarnate]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

I posted Reach's link to FB

[Izzy]

Re: New bacteria redefines life as we know it

Kind of kills the excitement reach. Oh well, the truth is more important.