Science jellies, "NASA Finds New Life". Thoughts? (details inside)
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Jude (
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December 2nd, 2010
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It is very exciting. More exciting still is that it was discovered here on Earth. It leads to the possibility of other lifeforms as yet unknown around ocean volcanoes.
I’m waiting until 2PM to see what’s really going on. But I read something about arsenic DNA?!?
Weird.
Very exciting and we need all the good news we can get.
Wow. I can’t wait to get more info on this.
Is there going to be a live web feed for this?
Apparently this is the story: CNN. Arsenic-feeding bacteria expands traditional notions of life
The bacteria in question were discovered here on Earth, at Mono Lake in California. One of the NASA-funded researchers is quoted: “Life as we know it requires particular chemical elements and excludes others,” Arizona State University researcher Ariel Anbar said in a news release. “But are those the only options? How different could life be?”
Erg. I mean, that’s interesting…but it seems mostly like an really cool example of an extremophile.
Maybe the key feature is that the research was funded by NASA—they’re desperate for public support right now.
It’s ironic that this finding broadens the possibilities of extraterrestrial life. While we may be even less alone in the universe than we thought, it would far more helpful (from the standpoint of searching on a limited budget) if they could discover something to narrow the search!
It would be very neat if the arsenic replaced phosphorous in the thing’s functioning DNA and ATP, but that remains to be seen for sure.
Super pissed at NASA for hyping this as having anything to do with astrobiology.
Interesting. But do they have any idea where it developed?
@Qingu NASA needs to justify it’s budget, yo.
Either NASA really wanted additional funding or this is another step in revealing extra-terrestrial life. Probably on Titan.
Okay – I’m a little unclear. Here it seems to be suggested that the DNA/RNA structure is/can be made from the arsenic, suggesting a completely different type of life rather than a standard extremophile.
So…as someone on the link asked – is this a branch of the same tree or a whole new tree?
Another report, from Science Daily
“Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.
“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…If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven’t seen yet?”
It’s the same branch, @iamthemob. The organism originally used phosphorus but had apparently evolved some ability to substitute arsenic. Then, in the lab, this ability got more and more selected for.
It’s still unclear to what extent it can substitute arsenic for phosphorus, exactly.
@Qingu – That’s how I was reading it…so how much would it alter the perception if it preferred phosphorus but developed, out of necessity, the ability to utilize arsenic?
Interesting, but NASA has played us on this one. They knew that the whole “NASA finds life” thing would leak out before the announcement and they knew we would all assume that this meant extraterrestrial life. It is extremely cool, but they seem to have exhibited wanton misdirection on this one.
I don’t know that one could look at this as an attempt to justify NASA’s budget as much as an affirmation that NASA deserves the budget it has. This could be one of the most important biological discoveries in the last 50 years. I’m happy to see .06% of my taxes og toward that (or whatever the number is. I admit that I pulled that percentage straight out of my lower orafice)
(wow…that was friggin close – it’s .6 of the federal budget – but still…that’s coming up on almost 20 Billion Dollars).
So what we’ve learned is that NASA has some pretty ridiculous ideas. It was already assumed, by people like me, that life is possible with any chemicals if they’re in the right configuration. It’s an incredibly lucky/desperate find and I’m glad we can get some minions on it now. There were already strange bacteria, this life really isn’t as “new” as was implied.
Well… it’s new in that it went from something a few people “thought might be possible” to a validated, proven scientific fact. I’d say that’s rather substantial.
Well, like I said it’s a lucky find and I’m glad we can study the details of this particular life, but I don’t think it’s very substantial at all that the people who needed this “proof” now have it.
Congress funded NASA’s Mission to Mono Lake?
@iamthemob how much would it alter the perception if it preferred phosphorus but developed, out of necessity, the ability to utilize arsenic?
According to the news article: 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.
That rather sounds like they are at least adapted to arsenic. Note that P and As are in the same group (column) of the periodic table. That’s likely why arsenic is poisonous to most life.
There’s a nice write-up of the finding at Pharyngula. Here’s PZ Myers’ take on the news:
So what does it all mean? It means that researchers have found that some earthly bacteria that live in literally poisonous environments are adapted to find the presence of arsenic dramatically less lethal, and that they can even incorporate arsenic into their routine, familiar chemistry.
It doesn’t say a lot about evolutionary history, I’m afraid. These are derived forms of bacteria that are adapting to artificially stringent environmental conditions, and they were found in a geologically young lake — so no, this is not the bacterium primeval. This lake also happens to be on Earth, not Saturn, although maybe being in California gives them extra weirdness points, so I don’t know that it can even say much about extraterrestrial life. It does say that life can survive in a surprisingly broad range of conditions, but we already knew that.
So it’s nice work, a small piece of the story of life, but not quite the earthshaking news the bookmakers were predicting.
I’m freakishly excited about this, and people that think it’s not a big deal are insane in my opinion.
@gasman – I don’t know if that suggests an arsenic preference. An initial mixture that was lean on arsenic but heavy on phosphorus would. Considering that it’s already established that it will use arsenic if available, the way to show a preference would be if it chose to use the arsenic despite an abundance of phosphorus.
As it appears there, it seems that we can’t rule out that phosphorus is in fact necessary, at least as an initial starting point/catalyst.
@iamthemob Yes, I agree—in fact I edited my answer while you were posting a response sorry about that. The question of whether life could evolve—or if this species of bacteria could arise—in the presence of arsenic but not phosphorus is left open.
This doesn’t surprise me in the least. I’ve always felt it was a possibility that other lifeforms could exist in seemingly inhospitable conditions or what would seem inhospitable at least to us. Personally I wouldn’t doubt many forms of life or even intelligent life existing outside of our own solar system or even in our own galaxy.
Gee whiz, I thought this was obvious back when we discovered teeming life living off the energy and sulfur expelled by volcanic fumaroles on the ocean bottom. That’s life thriving; whole ecosystems of life including bacteria, diatoms, plankton, tube-worms, and specialized shrimp and crabs; in sulfuric acid at well above the boiling point of water.
@ETpro, but even those extremophiles use the exact same elements as we do in their DNA and ATP. So if this critter uses a different element, that would be pretty cool.
But I still haven’t seen anything that verifies the arsenic was in working DNA or ATP (correct me if I’m wrong).
Cartoon from xkcd
The mouse-over text says, “According to a new paper published in the journal Science, reporters are unable to thrive in an arsenic-rich environment.”
ahhh xkcd always relevant.
@crazyivan, the arsenic is in functional DNA and ATP? I remember reading that they haven’t yet seen it actually replace the phosphorous in the DNA molecule’s backbone…
But there’s so much shit in the DNA molecule that doesn’t do anything (that we know of). Is it actually substituting arsenic for phosphorus into active genes, for example?
I will be exponentially more impressed if the thing is using arsenic to encode new proteins, rather than just stowing it away.
When the researchers added radio-labelled arsenate to the solution to track its distribution, they found that arsenic was present in the cellular fractions containing the bacterium’s proteins, lipids and metabolites such as ATP and glucose, as well as in the nucleic acids that made up its DNA and RNA. The amounts of arsenate detected were similar to those expected of phosphate in normal cell biochemistry, suggesting that the compound was being used in the same way by the cell.
The team used two different mass-spectrometry techniques to confirm that the bacterium’s DNA contained arsenic, implying — although not directly proving —that the element had taken on phosphate’s role in holding together the DNA backbone. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101202/full/news.2010.645.html
So, for now… More research needs to be done.
@ETpro It has always amazed me how any life could live more than 5 miles under the ocean’s surface where pressures can reach 7 tons per cubic inch.
@DrasticDreamer Great background info. Thanks.
@Paradox I am just as stunned as you. And to add to that, this stuff thrives in 240 degree farenheit concentrated sulphuric acid.
Who’s to say that there isn’t thriving life on gas giants like Jupiter? Certainly there is sufficient energy there. Talk about a primordial soup, Jupiter’s one massive soup bowl.
@Paradox & @ETpro
I’ll say I think it’s the coolest thing ever, but it’s really not that surprising. All the supposedly “hard to survive” stuff you’re describing is normal to that area. They don’t get crushed or burned because they are the crushing and the burning. Our environment is as deadly to them as theirs is to us. There’s bound to be some exceptions but life should be able to form anywhere any kind of complex chemical interaction occurs, given enough energy of course. There is life in the sun too, but we might not be able to understand it.
@ETpro Considering there are so many stars and galaxies it wouldn’t surprise me if there are many planets who have a similar enviroment to ours as well.
@Zyx Excellent points. Thanks.
@Paradox If we take into account all the things that produce wn environment like our Earth’s, then carbon copies can be shown to be statistically rare. Think in terms of the likelihood of winning a major lottery every month for your entire life without any cheating. Really, really rare.
@ETpro It’s not that I disagree with carbon copies being rare. Just like yellow stars are obviously more rare then white stars. I’m just going by large numbers. Even if a galaxy has 100 billion stars in it and 99.9% of them are white stars that can still leave at least a million yellow stars left. Yellow stars could be considered very rare but that still leaves a large number of them regardless. We have no way of knowing if carbon copies could have developed on other planets when we are not that advanced as a civilization (though many think we are) and have no way of directly observing other planets that are even within our own neighborhood of our own galaxy. Yes carbon based life could be rare per se but that would still leave a potentially large number where carbon copies still developed.
Why this talk of “carbon copy” planets? Although this discussion dwells in the hypothetical, it’s plausible that liquid water, a rocky surface, and plenty of time are sufficient conditions for carbon-based abiogenesis—and that leaves a rather wide range of planetary objects. The Drake equation takes the product of many tiny factors (such as the fraction of planets able to support life) & multiplies by an enormous quantity of solar systems to yield a largish number of potential et’s. If research findings in recent years have told us anything, it’s that typical Earth conditions aren’t necessarily so unusual or special for life to emerge.
@gasman – I feel as if the one thing that we can be sure of is that conditions that are as nearly identical to those on earth would be sufficient to support intelligent life – and that’s it. Whether or not other environments more distant from these can do so is uncertain, as we require knowledge of the formation of life on earth in order to properly make estimates. Considering the variety of theories of life origin, including those outside classic abiogenesis models, we aren’t clear enough on the conditions necessary for life to form here.
Until we have a relatively certain idea of how life started on earth, most of what we’re doing in terms of estimating life on other planets seems essentially to be a comparitively informed method of wild guessing. Knowing that answer may show that we were really, really good at our guesses – but until then it seems we’re only looking at possibilities rather than either plausibilities or probabilities.
What definition of “life” are ya’all using? Many common definitions are basically tautological: life is something made out of cells. Cells are alive.
Is the Great Red Spot alive? It’s been around for at least 385 years, maybe a lot longer. It “eats” other storms on Jupiter and absorbs their energy.
Part of what bothers me about this discovery is that it “proves” something that should be obvious: what’s interesting about life isn’t the precise chemicals it’s made of, but rather that it’s complex.
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