Way cool.
I love this quote from the article:
Astounding!
I wonder if the DNA chain goes clockwise or counter-clockwise.
I’ll wait until the conference to really get excited. Last time they pre-announced a conference, there were all sorts of crazy rumors, but it turned out to just be a young black hole.
Does anyone know what channels might carry this live?
NASA TV at 2PM EST: NASA Television | NASA
Maybe some of the cable news channels will also cover it, but that’s just a guess.
It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.
Speaking of Star Trek, didn’t they have an episode with a creature that had silicon in place of the carbon? No so far-fetched after all…
Though I’m left wondering what NASA was doing rooting around a lake in California. 
That would be the Horta.
But are there Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, Jim?
Probably looking for exactly this sort of thing.
Mono Lake is a unique and fairly isolated ecosystem which contains several species that are native only to that lake. As such, it serves as an excellent testbed for identifying patterns of novel lifeforms and the niches in which they might inhabit. The high alkalinity and salinity of the lake prevents other lifeforms from encroaching, allowing species isolates like the Mono Lake Brine Shrimp to flourish. However, Mono Lake has only existed as a permanent lake system for less than a million years, and thus, it would be a surprising place to find an entirely novel lifeform that is unrelated to other life on Earth. The linked article provides no details on the genetic makeup of the bacteria found, but I would estimate it far more likely (if the discovery is found to be genuine) that the bacteria is the result of a mutation that substituted arsenic for phosphorous rather than a completely unique development of life.
I’m not clear why the articles states that “[the] bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible”. Arsenic is in the same column in the Mendeleev periodic table as phosphorous and has a similar valence, which is of course why it is readily uptaken. There are a number of bacteria that reduce arsenates in the same manner that most do phosphates. Biochemically arsenic inhibits the action of a large number of enzymes, making it toxic to most multicellular life, but on a basic level there is no reason it can’t readily substitute for phosphorous.
In short, I’m less than persuaded that this is as much a revelation as the linked article would suggest, although it is no doubt of extreme interest to evolutionary zoologists and phylogeneticsts in how such a substitution could have come about. It if is genuinely a unique form of like unrelated to existing life that would be a revelation, but without sequencing the DNA and comparing to all existing bacteria we can’t be confident that this is true.
Stranger
The X-Files also had an episode along those lines–Firewalker, from season 2.
This article would seem to back up the idea that this is simply an adaption rather than something separately evolved, making this less earthshaking than the hype implies.
Well at least we still have sea monkeys.
The organisms with arsenic replacing phosphorus in DNA were grown in the lab in an arsenic-rich phosphorus-depleted environment; it is not known if the arsenic-DNA was functional. Whether organisms have arsenic-DNA “in the wild” is unknown. (Cite.)
Very interesting, I’m sure, but some comments here are misleading.
Fox News showed part of it, then cut to a bimbo talking about how she didn’t understand anything and the viewers wouldn’t, so they had a brief comment from a Discover magazine author, and then they went on to other stories. I can’t get the NASA website feed to work.
Maybe that should be their motto. “If our bimbos don’t understand it then neither will you”.
Fox News long ago passed the self-caricature threshold with their trademarked “Fair and Balanced” slogan. At this point, they’re sort of a post-post-Modern, post-ironic, post-infotainment performance art exhibit.
Stranger
Thanks for the link.