

It's not an arsenic-based life form - tokenadult
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arsenic-based_life.php

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hartror
This whole thing is yet another symptom of the science reporting ecosystem.
Continual attempts at big bang news stories by institutions and their PR
companies as well as a science media that goes for attention grabbing
headlines.

Is this interesting and significant news? Absolutely, but the way it has been
reported devalues the actual science done and misrepresents the science (and
science as a whole) to the wider public.

Science is rarely about big bang eureka moments, it is long hard years in a
lab building on someone else's work with a team of brilliant coworkers.

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alsocasey
To be completely fair, the link downplays the news more than it really
deserves imo. That a bacterium (even an extremophile) can even be coaxed into
substituting arsenic for phosphorus in some of its basic biochemical processes
is quite mind-boggling. I mean, how, by what mechanism is this achieved?

The paper would have been stronger with some attempt at elucidating such a
mechanism, but I can understand wanting to rush something like that out
(particularly when it will certainly garner interest from a big name journal)
before getting scooped.

~~~
hartror
I think PZ provided a decent grain of salt, pointing out what about the
research is important, what needs more work and most importantly what it isn't
telling us.

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yosho
This is the best article I've read on the subject so far, short of the actual
scientific publication.

I like how the author dives deep enough to give a you a good understanding of
what actually took place while not making it sound like a scientific journal.

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hartror
PZ is a reliable place to get the truth on biology/medicine based stories.

For space stuff Bad Astronomy usually provides the lowdown on the latest space
story flooding the main stream press.
(<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/>)

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amichail
Anyone think that the self-promotion done by Felisa Wolfe-Simon is a little
strange?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJQkOs9_GE0>

<http://www.ironlisa.com/>

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shaddi
It was a little off-putting to me when I was watching the press conference,
but it's pretty understandable given where she is in her career. If you look
at her CV, she just finished her post-doc work last year. This is most likely
her first year on the job driving her own research agenda and getting your
work published in Science and widely discussed in the mainstream press can
only help your tenure prospects.

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amichail
Is she looking for another job?

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shaddi
No clue, I don't know her personally. But speculating from what she writes
about on her website regarding her interest in teaching, I would assume she is
interested in a faculty position at some point in the future.

I really can't blame her for the self-promotion. I think this in some ways is
the academic equivalent of the acquisition: she got the scoop on a really
novel idea, she's well positioned to do future work in the area and be
recognized as the global expert (catch the "more to come in the next 15-30
years!" in the press conference), and she's really excited about the work. I
can only assume biogeochemistry is not having loads of money thrown at it
these days so she's smart to take advantage of this opportunity to really make
a name for herself.

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seanalltogether
So I'm curious if these cells can survive if reintroduced back in to the wild?

"Next, what they did was culture the bacteria in the lab, and artificially
jacked up the arsenic concentration, replacing all the phosphate (PO43-) with
arsenate (AsO43-). The cells weren't happy, growing at a much slower rate on
arsenate than phosphate, but they still lived and they still grew. These are
tough critters."

That seems to indicate that they wouldn't be able to compete with their
cousins outside of a controlled environment.

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eru
So even if there weren't arsenate based to begin with, now we do have
artificial arsenate life forms?

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hartror
Depends on what you mean with the term artificial. We have artificial arsenate
life forms in the same way we have artificial tame wolves.

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eru
Yes. What I meant: Even if we didn't have arsenate life forms, now we do.

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wccrawford
Where in that article does it say that it's not an arsenic-based life form?

In fact, it says exactly the opposite. It goes into detail about why it
shouldn't be the much of a surprise. (Not that I agree with him.)

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ceejayoz
> Where in that article does it say that it's not an arsenic-based life form?

Life on Earth is carbon-based. There are no phosphorous-based lifeforms that
we're aware of, so replacing phosphorous with arsenic doesn't make a carbon-
based bacterial species into an arsenic-based one.

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athom
Favorite line: _biochemistry is all about CHNOPS._

Pronounce the "CH" like "SH".

