spenser.d Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 so whats the news? They found bacteria who's DNA strand has a different chemical make-up than that of every other living organism on earth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quillz Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 I believe there are also suspicions that unusual lifeforms might exist in Lake Vostok, which has an extremely high oxygen concentration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zain Adeel Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 life on other planets? think about life here below our crust.. if there can be such bacteria what if there are bacteria which use other elements in their DNA? this will be sweet!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x-byte Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 so whats the news? Small minded I see. We just found evidence of life forming with different building blocks than ours. Meaning life can form on other planets with different chemical consistency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John S. Veteran Posted December 2, 2010 Veteran Share Posted December 2, 2010 [Threads Merged] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrunkenBeard Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 Actually there is no proof that life has formed with different building blocks, these bacteria could have just evolved due to their environment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x-byte Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 Actually there is no proof that life has formed with different building blocks, these bacteria could have just evolved due to their environment. I don't know how this is any different... We have been looking for planets similar to Earth because we have believed curtain chemicals needs to exist for life to form. This might change everything we look at life through out the universe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nagisan Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 I don't know how this is any different... We have been looking for planets similar to Earth because we have believed curtain chemicals needs to exist for life to form. This might change everything we look at life through out the universe. Exactly, if the bacteria contains elements we never knew could support life, then planets we may have ignored in searching for life due to different atmosphere/elements and what not, are all eligible to support life of some form now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahhell Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 Actually there is no proof that life has formed with different building blocks, these bacteria could have just evolved due to their environment. Uh....the bateria's DNA is different from ANYthing else found on Earth. That's not just from simple environmental adaptation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoredBozirini Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 Its starting now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spenser.d Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 Its starting now. NASA needs to hire speechwriters. This is agonizing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Warwagon MVC Posted December 2, 2010 MVC Share Posted December 2, 2010 She is so geeky and sounds hot They couldn't get him on a VoIP call? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aftas Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 She is so geeky and sounds hot. Where can I see this "she", "geeky", and "hot"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
draklin Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 NASA needs to hire speechwriters. This is agonizing. At least you could connect and listen to the speech. Official release about the findings... http://www.nasa.gov/...c_chemical.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McCordRm Posted December 2, 2010 Author Share Posted December 2, 2010 They should have hired a salesman to present the info. ARG. Still, the information, itself, is interesting as hell. ACK. The broadcast just locked up for me. Funny, since it's the "skeptic" that got shut down. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Warwagon MVC Posted December 2, 2010 MVC Share Posted December 2, 2010 The chemist is a very good speaker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacer Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 After reading NASA's official report, it seems they did not find these bacteria occurring naturally in the lake. They were able to get them to grow using Arsenic in the lab after removing all sources of Phosphorous. It still technically means these bacteria can be Arsenic based, but it some how drains the discovery of its awe-value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evolution Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 After reading NASA's official report, it seems they did not find these bacteria occurring naturally in the lake. They were able to get them to grow using Arsenic in the lab after removing all sources of Phosphorous. It still technically means these bacteria can be Arsenic based, but it some how drains the discovery of its awe-value. They didn't remove all sources of phosphorous. The bacterium had its own phosphorous and there were trace amounts in the soil they grew the bacterium in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stetson Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 After reading NASA's official report, it seems they did not find these bacteria occurring naturally in the lake. They were able to get them to grow using Arsenic in the lab after removing all sources of Phosphorous. It still technically means these bacteria can be Arsenic based, but it some how drains the discovery of its awe-value. I read that section as meaning that they removed the phosphorous to prove that the bacteria were using the arsenic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Warwagon MVC Posted December 2, 2010 MVC Share Posted December 2, 2010 The moderator chick sounds like Sara off csi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacer Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 I read that section as meaning that they removed the phosphorous to prove that the bacteria were using the arsenic. I originally read it that way too. However, the pictures on the official post make it seem that there are two versions of this bacteria. The bacteria looks different when you compare the pictures, so I just assumed they were showing the difference between the two versions (phosphorous vs arsenic). If the bacteria was always arsenic based, wouldn't it look the same in both pictures? So, I don't know. Maybe I am interpreting their explanation wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evolution Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 They weren't proving that it used arsenic per say. They simply proved that it can incorporate arsenic in low levels of phosphorous, even down to the level of the DNA backbone. Jim seems a little overenthusiastic, talking about things that aren't exactly practical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VazaGothic Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 They weren't proving that it used arsenic per say. They simply proved that it can incorporate arsenic in low levels of phosphorous, even down to the level of the DNA backbone. The article states they have removed phosphorus entirely, or perhaps I'm just reading it wrong .. ? 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evolution Posted December 2, 2010 Share Posted December 2, 2010 The article states they have removed phosphorus entirely, or perhaps I'm just reading it wrong .. ? The article on NASA's site does say they removed it and they continued to grow. However, those bacterium were grown originally with at least trace amounts of phosphorous, so they weren't phosophorous-free. The video also confirms this. http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/articles/thriving-on-arsenic/ http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/3698/thriving-on-arsenic http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/12/bacteria-can-integrate-arsenic-into-its-dna-and-proteins.ars Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zhangm Supervisor Posted December 3, 2010 Supervisor Share Posted December 3, 2010 Holy crap, this is huge. We then used high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) to positively identify As in extracted, gel purified genomic DNA (Fig. 2A). These data showed that DNA from +As/-P cells had elevated As and low P relative to DNA from the -As/+P cells. NanoSIMS analysis of the DNA showed that the As:P ratio on an atom per atom basis was significantly higher in the +As/-P versus -As/+P grown cells (Fig. 2A, 11?table S2). [...] Our NanoSIMS analyses, combined with the evidence for intracellular arsenic by ICP-MS and our radiolabeled 73AsO4 3- experiments demonstrated that intracellular AsO4 3- was incorporated into key biomolecules, specifically DNA. While other arsenical compounds, such as dimethylarsinate (DMA) also have As-O and As-C bonds, they have edge positions which are shifted to lower energy from the observed As(V) and have much shorter observed As-C bond distances (16). In contrast to the models, these As-O and As-C distances are consistent with that reported from the solved crystal structure of DNA for the analogous structural position of P relative to O and C atoms (Fig. 3A) (16, 17). Therefore, our X-ray data support the position of arsenate in a similar configuration to phosphate in a DNA backbone or potentially other biomolecules as well. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/01/science.1197258 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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