NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  1. Content with the tag: “arsenic

  2. Arsenic Bacterium Study: Comments and Authors’ Response


    In December of last year, NASA Astrobiology Program Postdoctoral Fellow Felisa Wolfe-Simon and collaborators published a paper online in Science Express describing a bacterium that substitutes arsenic for phosphorus to sustain its growth when in arsenic-rich, phosphorus-depleted medium. Their data showed evidence for arsenate in macromolecules that normally contain phosphate, most notably nucleic acids and proteins. In response to considerable feedback, Science Express has published eight technical comments and a response from Wolfe-Simon and her collaborators. The final version of the original paper will appear in the June 3 print issue of Science....

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  3. Get Your Biology Textbook...and an Eraser!


    ©2010 Henry BortmanGeomicrobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon, collecting lake-bottom sediments in the shallow waters of Mono Lake in California. Wolfe-Simon cultured the arsenic-utilizing organisms from this hypersaline and highly alkaline environment. Credit: ©2010 Henry Bortman
    One of the basic assumptions about life on Earth may be due for a revision thanks to research supported by NASA’s Astrobiology Program. Geomicrobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon has discovered a bacterium in California’s Mono Lake that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA. Up until now, it was believed that all life required phosphorus as a fundamental piece of the ‘backbone’ that holds DNA together. The discovery of an organism that thrives on otherwise poisonous arsenic broadens our thinking about the possibility of life on other planets, and begs a rewrite of biology textbooks by...

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    Source: [NASA]

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  4. Searching for Alien Life, on Earth


    Mono Lake
    Mono Lake, just east of Yosemite National Park, is a place of bizarre natural beauty. It also boasts one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth. The latter fact, says geomicrobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon, makes it a good spot to look for alien life. This is why researchers funded by Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology (Exo/Evo) at the NASA Astrobiology Program have been searching the shores of Mono Lake for life whose biological makeup is fundamentally different than that of any known life on Earth.

    Source: [astrobio.net]

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