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Oddball bacterium can survive without one of biology's essential building blocks.
A bacterium found in the arsenic-filled waters of a Californian lake is poised to overturn scientists' understanding of the biochemistry of living organisms. The microbe seems to be able to replace phosphorus with arsenic in some of its basic cellular processes — suggesting the possibility of a biochemistry very different from the one we know, which could be used by organisms in past or present extreme environments on Earth, or even on other planets.
Scientists have long thought that all living things need phosphorus to function, along with other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and sulphur. The phosphate ion, PO43-, plays several essential roles in cells: it maintains the structure of DNA and RNA, combines with lipids to make cell membranes and transports energy within the cell through the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP).
But Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a geomicrobiologist and NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow based at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, and her colleagues report online today in Science1 that a member of the Halomonadaceae family of proteobacteria can use arsenic in place of phosphorus. The finding implies that "you can potentially cross phosphorus off the list of elements required for life", says David Valentine, a geomicrobiologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
www.nature.com
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This is what the big NASA Astro Biological Announcement is going to be about.
A bacterium found in the arsenic-filled waters of a Californian lake is poised to overturn scientists' understanding of the biochemistry of living organisms. The microbe seems to be able to replace phosphorus with arsenic in some of its basic cellular processes — suggesting the possibility of a biochemistry very different from the one we know, which could be used by organisms in past or present extreme environments on Earth, or even on other planets.
Scientists have long thought that all living things need phosphorus to function, along with other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and sulphur. The phosphate ion, PO43-, plays several essential roles in cells: it maintains the structure of DNA and RNA, combines with lipids to make cell membranes and transports energy within the cell through the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP).
But Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a geomicrobiologist and NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow based at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, and her colleagues report online today in Science1 that a member of the Halomonadaceae family of proteobacteria can use arsenic in place of phosphorus. The finding implies that "you can potentially cross phosphorus off the list of elements required for life", says David Valentine, a geomicrobiologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Arsenic-eating microbe may redefine chemistry of life - Nature
Oddball bacterium can survive without one of biology's essential building blocks.
www.nature.com
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This is what the big NASA Astro Biological Announcement is going to be about.
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