NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2

[neonplanet40]

Me too :s

[mikerr]

Not really sure how the new finding
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/..._chemical.html

differs from that of 2008:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl...e&topic=latest

So basically bacteria can survive in arsenic rich environment (2008),
but now they've studied it and found it's actually using the asrenic in making new cells?
Or is it that they've found it can survive with no phosphorus at all ?

Any biologists amongst us?

[finlay666]

Not really sure how the new finding

So basically bacteria can survive in arsenic rich environment (2008),
but now they've studied it and found it's actually using the asrenic in making new cells?
Or is it that they've found it can survive with no phosphorus at all ?

Any biologists amongst us?

Finding that something can live in a harsh environment is VERY different to that of finding something that has a composition that nothing else on Earth has, it's that the cells use Arsenic instead of Phosphorus in the building blocks. It has quite strong implications of possibilities of other combinations of elements being used in other organisms

[mikerr]

Done some more reading and these are the key parts I think:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/no...t-about-aliens

life is mostly made up of just six: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus. This elite clique is meant to be irreplaceable. But the Mono Lake bacteria may have broken their dependence on one of the group – phosphorus – by swapping it for arsenic. If that’s right, they would be the only known living things to do this.

Arsenic had replaced phosphorus in many important molecules including ATP. It was even in their DNA

All other life uses phosphorus to create the backbone of the famous double helix, but GFAJ-1’s DNA had a spine of arsenic

..and not an alien in sight

[htid]

Done some more reading and these are the key parts I think:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/no...t-about-aliens






..and not an alien in sight

No but it does open up the possibility that life on other planets doesn't need to have the same makeup as anything that exists on earth. So for example, it may not matter if planet X has no nitrogen, life may still be able to exist. My girlfriend is a biochemist and the fact that this bacteria can use arsenic instead of phosphorus in it's DNA backbone seemed to excite her, and the people at the press conference seemed very exicted, so it must be quite important a discovery!