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Nasa Discovers New Life

NeverAmI

NeverAmI

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Arsenic based life-form.

http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life

Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything.
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Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While she and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth.
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Holy shit.
 
Awesome. Now go and find the same on Titan :)

Edit:

The implication of this is that we have two separate genesis events, or whatever you want to call it. Two separate origins of life. That the first spark of life is not singular. Two parallel evolutionary tracts completely independent of one another. This is HUGE.
 
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:D
 
Praefect said:
Awesome. Now go and find the same on Titan :)

Edit:

The implication of this is that we have two separate genesis events, or whatever you want to call it. Two separate origins of life. That the first spark of life is not singular. Two parallel evolutionary tracts completely independent of one another. This is HUGE.
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Arsenic and Phosphorus are very similar (our body confuses arsenic for phosphorus and tries to use it unsuccessfully, which is what makes it poisonous). The bacteria still uses DNA, but it uses arsenic in the structure rather than phosphorus. Whether the arsenic replacing phosphorus was an adaptation made by a pre-existing phosphorus based organism or something from the ground up remains to be seen.

However, this is the first EVER life form discovered not to be fundamentally based on only Oxygen, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Sulfur, Carbon and Phosphorus.

This article goes into more scientific detail: http://arstechnica.com/science/news...tegrate-arsenic-into-its-dna-and-proteins.ars
 
Pretty cool.
 
NeverAmI said:
Arsenic and Phosphorus are very similar (our body confuses arsenic for phosphorus and tries to use it unsuccessfully, which is what makes it poisonous). The bacteria still uses DNA, but it uses arsenic in the structure rather than phosphorus. Whether the arsenic replacing phosphorus was an adaptation made by a pre-existing phosphorus based organism or something from the ground up remains to be seen.

However, this is the first EVER life form discovered not to be fundamentally based on only Oxygen, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Sulfur, Carbon and Phosphorus.

This article goes into more scientific detail: http://arstechnica.com/science/news...tegrate-arsenic-into-its-dna-and-proteins.ars
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Aww.

But still

:m200:

That's a pretty radical adaption. This is so cool.
 
The discovery is amazing, but it's easy to go overboard with it. ... For a start, the bacteria – a strain known as GFAJ-1 – don’t depend on arsenic. They still contain detectable levels of phosphorus in their molecules and they actually grow better on phosphorus if given the chance. It’s just that they might be able to do without this typically essential element – an extreme and impressive ability in itself. Nor do the bacteria belong to a second branch of life on Earth – the so-called “shadow biosphere” that Wolfe-Simon talked about a year ago. When she studied the genes of these arsenic-lovers, she found that they belong to a group called the Oceanospirillales. They are no stranger to difficult diets. Bacteria from the same order are munching away at the oil that was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year. The arsenic-based bacteria aren’t a parallel branch of life; they’re very much part of the same tree that the rest of us belong too.
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http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/n...-using-arsenic-and-no-this-isnt-about-aliens/

Just sayin'. But cool nonetheless; this is a really big deal for biologists.
 
this shall be interesting
 
:m063:
 
Very exciting news!

This is an excerpt from sciencedaily.com

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," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team's lead scientist. "If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven't seen yet?"
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Boring I was hoping for ET.

I bet the reptilian shapeshifters are made of arsenic.
 
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I love it when scientists get their socks blown off (I think they love it, too). Seems to happen fairly regularly the more we snoop about.
 
NASA has discovered a new life form—called GFAJ-1
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Why must they always ruin new discoveries by giving them an ugly name. They could at least called it Bob or something :(

But that's really interesting, and of course life is going to be different on other planets, the whole environnement is different.
There may even be some kind of life on a near planet made by something we can't see or touch, so we wouldn't think there is life nearby when there really is.
 
I would've called it the ArsHOLE (Arsenic Habituating Organic Living Entity).
 
Royal said:
Why must they always ruin new discoveries by giving them an ugly name. They could at least called it Bob or something :(

But that's really interesting, and of course life is going to be different on other planets, the whole environnement is different.
There may even be some kind of life on a near planet made by something we can't see or touch, so we wouldn't think there is life nearby when there really is.
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Maybe YOU are actually a sentient antimatter entity that has found a way to surf the interwebs!
 
Quinlan said:
Boring I was hoping for ET.

I bet the reptilian shapeshifters are made of arsenic.
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Now THAT is funny. Go on Youtube if you don't know what he is talking about. There are some crazies out there!
 
I know practically nothing about how Bactria works yet alone DNA structures (will learn this next year in biology), but none the less this is an amazing discovery.
 
Thats cool, so there is a creature who runs off of what kills any other life form on the planet. That'd be an awesome super power.
 
This is awesome :D

Some people were disappointed that this did not turn out to be the "aliens" they are used to seeing but from a scientific perspective this is revolutionary and AMAZING :)
 
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