Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
ie8 fix

arsenic

No, arsenic is not a life-giver

I confess to not having been aware that arsenic might breathe life into things.

I had only been aware of it as something killers use in Agatha Christie novels.

However, in 2010, a researcher declared that a bacterium in California's Mono Lake (near Yosemite) thrived on arsenic, while being deprived of phosphorus. (I have embedded a discussion of this finding.)

At the time, Felisa Wolfe-Simon of NASA's Astrobiology Institute suggested that life as we know it may not be life as we know it.

Now, however, two new studies suggest that it may be life as we know … Read more

New bacteria redefines 'life as we know it'

NASA scientists have discovered a new type of bacteria that is able to substitute arsenic--a poison to most living creatures--as a biological building block, something no other known life form on Earth can do, the agency said today.

In a press conference held at NASA's Washington D.C. headquarters, scientists announced that they had discovered a new form of bacteria, known as GFAJ-1, in California's Mono Lake that has DNA completely foreign to anything ever before found on Earth. It has the ability to substitute arsenic at the DNA level for phosphorus.

That would distinguish it from every … Read more