Posts: Links / They're heeeEEEeerrre.

Just saw twitter blowing up about this. Incredible discovery.

Felisa Wolfe-Simon of NASA had a hunch that such a life form could exist, which led her research team to Mono Lake, California where they extracted a bacteria that has the ability to trade arsenic for phosphorous.

Importantly, when they allowed the bacteria to grow in a pure arsenic solution, slowed to 60% of the growth seen in a pure phosphorous solution. This indicates that while these bacteria have the ability to use arsenic as the basic building blocks of life, phosphorous remains a more efficient element.

A tiny shadow of doubt, but an important one, from Discover:

"It’s an amazing result, but even here, there is room for doubt. As mentioned, Wolfe-Simon still found a smidgen of phosphorus in the bacteria by the end of the experiment. The levels were so low that the bacteria shouldn’t have been able to grow but it’s still not clear how important this phosphorus fraction is. Would the bacteria have genuinely been able to survive if there was no phosphorus at all?

Nor is it clear if the arsenic-based molecules are part of the bacteria’s natural portfolio. Bear in mind that Wolfe-Simon cultured these extreme microbes using ever-increasing levels of arsenic. In doing so, she might have artificially selected for bacteria that can use arsenic in place of phosphorus, causing the denizens of Mono Lake to evolve new abilities (or overplay existing ones) under the extreme conditions of the experiment."

ooooo aresenic....spooky.