Nasa Research Announcement

Scientists believe that bacteria-based arsenic found in the bottom of a lake in California may have major implications for the ongoing search for extraterrestrial life.

Apparently, the place to find some sort of bacteria Mono Lake, California. Indeed, the announcement that someone has found a completely alien life-forms in California is not exactly news. Usually the response of California to find a completely alien life is to give you a reality TV show.

But now researchers have discovered a bacterium that has five of the essential elements but, basically, the phosphorus is replaced with similar but cousin arsenic poison.


Bacteria found in salty Mono Lake in California are harvested from the mud and grow in a laboratory mixture which contains arsenic. The scientists say the organism eventually traded phosphorus atoms to arsenic, dictated against what conventional knowledge is the basic principle of science.

News about scientific discovery caused a stir, including a call to NASA from the White House and Congress to ask whether the second line of earthly life have been found.

Before you get upset, realize that while not sexy as little green men, it is a big problem. There is no other life forms exist off arsenic. It has long been assumed that without the six certain essential elements - carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur - life could not exist. The discovery shows "life-as-we-know-it can be much more flexible than we generally assume or can imagine," Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA biochemist told the Post Marc Kaufman.

Here's the technical stuff from NASA statement:

Newly discovered microbe, strain GFAJ-1, is a member of the general group of bacteria, Gammaproteobacteria. In the laboratory, the researchers managed to grow microbes from the lake on a very slim diet on phosphorus, but including generous portions of arsenic. When the researchers removed phosphorus and replace it with arsenic microbes continue to grow. further analysis showed that the arsenic was used to produce new building blocks GFAJ-1 cells.

"We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we find is that microbes do something new - the parts of the building itself out of the arsenic," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA researcher who led the experiment. "If anything on Earth could do something unexpected, what else can life do that we have not seen yet?"