At their conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.
But not this one. This one is completely different. Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While she and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth.
All the sci-fi books say alternate life forms are made out of silicon. But freakin' arsenic? Truth really is stranger than science fiction. This is nifty stuff, folks. Biology just got a shot in the arm here.
I wonder what the no-science arm of the GOP has to say about this. Probably that we need to cut NASA's funding before arsenic terrorists turn all our kids gay or something.
Still, for the scientists at NASA? You'd better believe this is an EPIC WIN of evolutionary proportions.
[UPDATE] Some clarification from the NASA press conference today:
According to Wolfe Simon, they knew that "some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new—building parts of itself out of arsenic." The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding organisms in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth. Like NASA's Ed Weiler says: "The definition of life has just expanded."
Nifty.