NASA press conference Dec. 2, 2010

The press conference is still around two hours away, but it's been allegedly leaked to a Dutch news site that NASA will be announcing the discovery of a bacteria found in Mono Lake that utilizes arsenic instead of phosphorous and is thus different from every other form of life known to man. Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon has been studying the Mono Lake biosphere with that hypothesis in mind, so the rumor is plausible.

All known life on Earth utilizes carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. If this is true, it will be a revolutionary find.

Nieuw soort leven ontdekt [Google translation]

This would be great. Not only is it fascinating in its own right, it has huge implications about the possibility of extraterrestial life. Although people often say that, in the vastness of space, life must be common, the fact that on this planet life, to this point, only seems to have arisen once has suggested that maybe life is only an incredibly bizarre accident. If it can arise more than once on earth, maybe it can happen in the rest of the universe.

I'd say it's more proof of concept, rather than an unexpected discovery, if the leaks are correct.

Still stunning, and exciting, but not something that I'd consider revolutionary.

Why wouldn't you consider it revolutionary, Loki? It's been hypothesized, but the idea of life originating more than once on Earth has largely been ignored. Without evidence for it, we've largely assumed that all life on our planet came from the same beginning and will all have the same characteristics. All of those textbooks out there that say all Earth-life comes from the same origins and uses the same basic elements will have to be revised, at the very least. This would be very strong evidence for multiple origins of life right here on this planet and give us an actual, living example of a life form that is "alien" to our own form of life. It's a tiny, self-replicating laboratory for us.

Well, a lot of it comes down to what you consider revolutionary.

For me, a theory, or especially evidence, is going to be revolutionary if it significantly changes our understanding of the world. I don't think that this confirmation is truly revolutionary, since the theory (while not precisely mainstream) had been well enough respected to have this study funded - it's not so much that the theory of multiple origins of life on Earth has been ignored by the scientific community as it had been considered well-nigh impossible to test. When someone realized the potential for such testing, the experiment was done.

I don't believe that any paradigms of biology are going to be thrown out, simply one set of assumptions about life on Earth are going to have to be reviewed, and the claim that life is a more robust process than some people have been advocating will have to be accepted.

All we're doing, metaphorically, here is shaking up our tree of knowledge, and knocking out some old theories, pruning them away from other competing theories that will now be able to grow with their own branches.

It's important. It's exciting. It's also confirmation of what I'd suspected for some time. How can I feel it to be revolutionary, when I'd always been convinced of the multiple origin theory in the first place?

I must respectfully disagree. My thresh-hold is different from yours, so finding a microbe that is unlike any other known life form and contradicts every statement about what is required for life on Earth is revolutionary as far as I'm concerned.

From what I understand from the press conference so far, it looks like this could challenge some of our existing ideas about chemistry as well, since it implies using arsenic in ways for which it was believed to be ill-suited. It'll open things up for other possible substitutions that haven't been considered before because our "constants" in nature are no longer so constant.

I'm lost on this, how much bigger is this than finding the Volcanic Vent bacteria that use hydrogen sulfide for there chemosynthesis?

I thought that already showed us a large divergence from standard earth life?

Well, the chemosynthetic bacteria, that form the basis of those ecosystems, are recognizably bacteria. They use available chemicals in new and exciting ways, they've also got ways to keep their proteins from denaturing in the high heat they live in. But at root, they're still closely related to other life on Earth.

What I believed at the time was revolutionary about them was not their origins, but that they disproved the canard that all life on Earth must rely upon solar energy for survival. It was also, I believe, the death knell for the claim that many biologists still try to make - that life must use the same basic chemical cycles that we're already familiar with. Having said that, not everyone agrees with my interpretation.

This discovery is truly revolutionary if, as some people argue, that there was real reason to believe that all life would have to follow our exact chemical cycles.

The difference in the cycles between the chemosynthetic ecosystems and this organism are going to be orders of magnitude different. Black smoker bacteria are recognizably bacteria - I wonder whether these critters fit any of our current definitions.

Metabolically speaking, they're virtually indistinguishable from other microbes. That's part of what makes the whole thing so interesting, that they're able to do this and behave just like we'd expect microbes to behave while utilizing arsenic in the very building blocks of their DNA.

Thanks to both of you for the explanation. Pretty amazing whether revolutionary or not.

And the link to the article has been mailed out: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...2dec_monolake/

I find this sort of thing fascinating, but I have nothing to contribute to the conversation besides the word 'fascinating'.

We actually got to watch the video in class and discussed this at length, which was pretty cool. Somewhat dishearteningly a few of my classmates felt need to remark on the relative attractiveness of the woman who'd discovered the bugs. Yes, the size of her breasts is really important when it comes to her scientific contributions. :rolleyes:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by OtakuLoki

What I believed at the time was revolutionary about them was not their origins, but that they disproved the canard that all life on Earth must rely upon solar energy for survival. It was also, I believe, the death knell for the claim that many biologists still try to make - that life must use the same basic chemical cycles that we're already familiar with. Having said that, not everyone agrees with my interpretation.

This discovery is truly revolutionary if, as some people argue, that there was real reason to believe that all life would have to follow our exact chemical cycles.

---

There are still researchers saying that there are reasons to believe all life should follow our chemical cycles and that while this bug is doing what Dr. Wolfe-Simon observed it shouldn't be capable of doing that. Which seems rather assinine to me, since the proof is right there. Some of the counterarguments are claiming that she didn't really discover it, but that it was weaned onto arsenic and the results of her experiment are from human intervention rather than natural activity.

Not true. Just flat out not true. They really are capable of substituting arsenate for phosphate and while they do thrive on phosphate, they are able to survive just fine on the arsenate. There was no weaning process whatsoever, as they took the samples directly from the lake mud, rinsed away traces of phosphate, and put it into an environment that had no phosphate in it. They weren't trained or engineered or anything like that.

The fact that people are trying so hard to argue what was discovered wasn't a discovery at all points to just how astounding this really is. If it was only a minor revelation that was backing up accepted theories, people wouldn't be grasping at incredibly stupid straws to try to argue against it.

On the other hand, this whole thing is incredibly political. Dr. Wolfe-Simon has another paper coming out in February which will probably better elucidate a lot of this, but they had to get all of this out now (and with splashy language like "aliens!", "new life forms!", etc.) because NASA is hurting for funding and they want to drum up public interest before the new session in Congress begins.

I'm completely supportive of that and while I wish it wasn't necessary, I sure hope they're able to get money so they can continue this kind of research.

From the link What Exit posted above, there's this paragraph:

Quote:

---

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.

---

I assume that's the part that's being used to suggest the bacteria were weaned off of phosphorus? In your class discussion did they make it clear that microbes without any phosphorus at all were a separate group from the ones that had been on the lean phosphorus diet?

Well at any rate, this discovery should advance the science of arsenic microbiology by decades.

I can sort of understand where some biologists might reasonably object to the "raise generations of microbes in an unnaturally toxic laboratory environment" methodology. It seems a bit like announcing that you have "discovered" a species of mouse which has no immune system, after you have spent years breeding mice in isolation for just that characteristic.

Also, NASA: why the hell are you supporting research on lake germs? I am not about to argue that arsenic germs are not in need of urgent study, though I am in fact saying exactly that; but surely there is some other federal organization with a more applicable mandate that could be cover funding, like the CDC or perhaps the USDA.

Seriously, have you just given up on the whole "space exploration" thing or what? I can certainly understand how the current political climate could result in a pessimistic attitude on your part, but that is no excuse to blow your meager annual budget on studying random crap in your backyard.

I am no scientist, but it is my understanding that lakes are on the ground. This bears emphasis. These germs live in mud, which is under a lake, on the ground. To find these germs, you have to look down. That is pretty much the exact opposite of what you guys are supposed to be doing.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by terrifel

I can sort of understand where some biologists might reasonably object to the "raise generations of microbes in an unnaturally toxic laboratory environment" methodology. It seems a bit like announcing that you have "discovered" a species of mouse which has no immune system, after you have spent years breeding mice in isolation for just that characteristic.

---

Yeah, I have to admit the more I read, the lower my enthusiasm for this goes. The science doesn't sound as solid as it was presented.

Quote:

---

None of the scientists I spoke to ruled out the possibility that such weird bacteria might exist. Indeed, some of them were co-authors of a 2007 report for the National Academies of Sciences on alien life that called for research into, among other things, arsenic-based biology. But almost to a person, they felt that the NASA team had failed to take some basic precautions to avoid misleading results.

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 to the DNA, like gum on a shoe. "It is pretty trivial to do a much better job," said Rohwer.

In fact, says Harvard microbiologist Alex Bradley, the NASA scientists unknowingly demonstrated the flaws in their own experiment. They immersed the DNA in water as they analyzed it, he points out. Arsenic compounds fall apart quickly in water, so if it really was in the microbe's genes, it should have broken into fragments, Bradley wrote Sunday in a guest post on the blog We, Beasties. But the DNA remained in large chunks—presumably because it was made of durable phosphate.

---

From Slate.

It does look more and more like a sloppy bid for attention and funding without very good science to back it up.

Well.. scientists are some of the biggest cunts in the world, and I don't think it was surprising to see them all rush to see who can piss on the parade first. We'll figure out the truth later on. Who cares though, this scientist is hot.

http://science.discovery.com/tv/thro...et-here-07.jpg
So damn cute

Quote:

---

Originally posted by hatesfreedom

Well.. scientists are some of the biggest cunts in the world

---

http://www.harkavagrant.com/history/rosalindsm.png

"Scientists have discovered a bacteria that can eat arsenic"

NO, science journalism, that is NOT the point of the story. That sentence makes me go "meh", saying it uses arsenic instead of phosphorous makes me go "no way! awesome!"

Sigh... step one, dumb down, step two, sensationalise. Result = no.

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/image...90209/340x.gif

That's it, Zuul. Absolutely.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Zuul

I assume that's the part that's being used to suggest the bacteria were weaned off of phosphorus? In your class discussion did they make it clear that microbes without any phosphorus at all were a separate group from the ones that had been on the lean phosphorus diet?

---

No, I guess they were essentially "weaned." That isn't how it was presented to us, nor is it how Wolfe-Simon discussed it. It's still cool, but kind of self-aggrandizing. :\

Like I said, though, the whole thing is outrageously political. NASA wants funding, so they're grasping at and touting everything they can.