Toxic microbe expands definition of life according to NASA
A couple of days ago, NASA said that they would be holding a press conference that would “discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” Any announcement from NASA regarding extraterrestrial life is going to be greeted with a lot of speculation, but the answer turns out to be a little closer to home.
To the disappointment of some, NASA didn’t spill the beans on the alien captured at Roswell. Instead, the finding were a little closer to home, but not insignificant in their own right.
Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.
“The definition of life has just expanded,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.” [from NASA]
The microbe in question is unceremoniously called GFAJ-1, and was specifically grown in Mono Lake because the lake’s unusual chemistry of high salinity and alkalinity, while having low phosphorus levels while rich in arscenic. In this environment researcherf found that the microbes were not only eating the arsenic, which is possible, but using the normally toxic substance as a building block in it’s DNA. Star Trek jokes about arsenic based lifeforms aside, the findings mean that the definition of “life as we know it” has become a much broader term and that biology textbook publishers are looking at big revision down the line. It also means that as space organizations start looking at more detail into the make up of Super Earths, they’ll have more to watch out for.
In the meantime, you can read the full article here.
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