[meteorite-list] NASA Astrobiology News Conference scooped by UKSun?

[Sterling K. Webb]

Hi, Rob, List,

The experiements with Mono Lake organisms are
essentially this:  you collect a buncha them in
Mono water, then you both add more arsenic and
remove all the phosphorus, while heavily feeding
the critters, until you end up with arsenic saturation
and phosporus absence.

Lots of species die, but a few flourish. Eventually,
you should have The One. Whether or not it is
significant depends entirely on HOW different it
is. If it has a vast reportoire of special enzymes
that shuffle the arsenic into harmless paths, it's
clever but it's Earth Life As We Know It.

On the other hand, if it uses ATA instead of ATP
and more importantly if its genetic molecule does
not have phosphates in its nucleotide backbone...
well, is that even "DNA"?

The answer is in the genes. If they are comparable
to other becteria genomes, then we have Weird Life.
If they are different and incomprehensible (at first),
we may have Other Life. Whether that would be
a very early split in one lineage, or two lineages...
well, that's the question, isn't it?

Here we are, gazing back fondly to our first primitive
ancestor, and at the same time, somebody is throwing
their own Creation of Life over in the next county...

That would be news.


Sterling K. Webb
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matson, Robert D." <ROBERT.D.MATSON at saic.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2010 2:16 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] NASA Astrobiology News Conference scooped by 
UKSun?


> Hopefully *this* isn't the extent of the NASA news:
>
> http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3253913/NASA-researchers-find-
> life-in-poisonous-arsenic-lake-in-USA.html
>
> http://www.geekosystem.com/nasa-press-conference-arsenic/
>
> --Rob
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