All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same. NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon and her team have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the newly discovered microorganism – called GFAJ-1 – uses the poisonous arsenic for all its building blocks.
The new life forms up close, at five micrometres.
According to Felisa:
We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we’ve found is a microbe doing something new – building parts of itself out of arsenic. We know 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 beings 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. 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.”
Even closer, showing their internal structure.
While this new life form hasn’t been found in another planet, this discovery does indeed change everything we know about biology. I don’t know about you but I’ve not been so excited about a bacteria since my STD tests came back clean. And that’s without counting yesterday’s announcement on the discovery of a massive number of red dwarf stars, which may harbour a trillion Earths, dramatically increasing our chances of finding extraterrestrial life.
Mono Lake photography by Sathish J – Creative Commons
fartasaurousrex
Friday, December 3, 2010 at 9:27 AMyeah, now spend that $19 billion to find it on another planet thanks.
olearymo
Friday, December 3, 2010 at 10:09 AMI can’t believe the attitude people like you are showing.
It’s just mind boggling. Why don’t you go and find some alien life?
“ohhh, those doctors STILL haven’t cured cancer? what are we paying them the big buck for? lololol! They r teh suzx0r5″.
Simon Reidy
Friday, December 3, 2010 at 3:40 PM+1. It just shows a profound ignorance of the scientific method. This is an incredible discovery in a very long process for the hunt for E.T. life.
huu
Friday, December 3, 2010 at 10:44 AMthink legos, if we have enough pieces we can build anything we want. just because we came from part of the universe made of mostly red pieces doesn’t meant that the rest of the universe is the same. Humans are so ego centric I m surprise that we got this far.
Sylphier
Friday, December 3, 2010 at 11:09 AMI’m wouldn’t say humans are THAT ego-centric. Imagination are based on knowledge as we know it. From our existing knowledge and experience on Earth we can expand our imagination to contemplate what life form may be like beyond our planet.
Without possible knowledge of what may constitute life in outer space, we try to apply our definition of life and try to find something out there.
If we know our life on Earth is solely made out of red Lego blocks, then we try to look for blocks of all size and colour and shape out there. But what if life on another planet was made out of Play Dough? We would have no clue that such material can be used to build life.
T
Friday, December 3, 2010 at 12:53 PMThat was very elequantly put. I do liek the play-dough analogy.
I agree whole heartedly here. It’s really hard to imagine something you never knew could exist in the first place.
Ron
Friday, December 3, 2010 at 3:24 PMI can’t wait for the conspiracy theories to start.
matt
Saturday, December 4, 2010 at 2:55 AMlol, all I can think of is ‘Evolution’, the AWESOME movie. and their simplistic way of using a pattern on the periodic table to match a life forms building blocks to its poison.
so whats poisonous to this life form? air?
anyway, I’m having trouble keeping score,
have they found ANY extra terrestrial life yet? like even a microorganism on another planet, or comet? at any rate, the problem with this is that it now causes the search for life to diverge from the search for places habitable by us. which is bad, because I think that is more important at the moment. we need to focus on colonizing other planets, because this one’s full, a rare jem being destroyed a bit more every day its over crowded, and its never a good thing to have all your eggs in one basket. aliens can wait.
Urmi
Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 7:51 PMhaha I also thought of ‘Evolution’ while reading this post. Except if I’m not mistaken, the aliens in that movie had arsenic as their poison.
New discoveries like these are always fun to read about