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GFAJ-1 is a rod-shaped extremophile bacterium in the Halomonadaceae family that, when starved of phosphorus, is capable of incorporating the usually poisonous element arsenic. Its discovery lends weight to the long-standing idea that life on other planets may have a radically different chemical makeup and may help in the search for alien life.
Discovery
The GFAJ-1 microoorganism was cultured and discovered by Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology fellow in residence at the US Geologic Survey in Menlo Park, California. The organism was isolated and cultured beginning in 2009 from sediments she and her colleagues collected along the shore of Mono Lake, California, U.S.A. Mono Lake is hypersaline and highly alkaline. It also has one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic in the world (200 μM). The discovery was widely publicized on December 2, 2010.
On the tree of life, according to the results of 16S rRNA sequencing, the rod-shaped GFAJ-1 nestles in among other salt-loving bacteria in the family Halomonadaceae. Many of these bacteria are known to be able to tolerate high levels of arsenic, but GFAJ-1 can go a step further. When starved of phosphorus, it can instead incorporate arsenic into its DNA and continue growing. By introducing radioactive arsenic into the growth medium of some of the microbes, Wolfe-Simon learned that approximately one-tenth of the arsenic absorbed by the bacteria ended up in their nucleic acids. Within the DNA extracted from GFAJ-1 cells starved of phosphorus, arsenic bonded to oxygen in the same way phosphorus bonds to oxygen in normal DNA, and found that when cultured in arsenate solution it grew 60% as fast as it did in phosphate solution — not as well, but still robustly.
When the researchers added radio-labelled arsenate to the solution to track its distribution, they found that arsenic was present in the cellular fractions containing the bacterium's proteins, lipids and metabolites such as ATP and glucose, as well as in the nucleic acids that made up its DNA and RNA.
A critic has suggested that perhaps the trace contaminants in the growth medium used by Wolfe-Simon in her lab cultures are sufficient to supply the phosphorus needed for the cells' DNA. He thinks it's more likely that arsenic is being used elsewhere in the cells. What is needed next is to know which molecules in the cell have arsenic in them, and whether these molecules are active and functional.
Implications
The discovery of this microorganism that can use arsenic to build its cellular components may indicate that life can form in the absence of large amounts of available phosphorus, thus increasing the probability of finding life elsewhere in the universe. The finding gives weight to the long-standing idea that life on other planets may have a different chemical makeup and may help in the search for alien life.
See also
Notes
- ^ "Arsenic-loving bacteria may help in hunt for alien life". BBC News. December 2, 2010. Retrieved 2010-12-02.
{{cite news}}:|first=missing|last=(help) - ^ "Arsenic-Eating Bacteria Opens New Possibilities for Alien Life". Space.com. Space.com. December 2, 2010. Retrieved 2010-12-02.
{{cite news}}:|first=missing|last=(help) - ^ Felisa Wolfe-Simon; et al. (2010). "A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus". Science. doi:10.1126/science.1197258.
{{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in:|author=(help) - ^ "Arsenic-eating microbe may redefine chemistry of life". Nature News. 2 December 2010. Retrieved 2010-12-02.
{{cite news}}:|first=missing|last=(help) - Could the Mono Lake arsenic prove there is a shadow biosphere?, The Times, 4 March 2010, accessed 2 December 2010
References
- Felisa Wolfe-Simon; et al. (2010). "A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus". Science. doi:10.1126/science.1197258.
{{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in:|author=(help) - A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus
External links
- NASA - Astrobiology Magazine: "Searching for Alien Life, on Earth"
- NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical
- Nature News: "Arsenic-eating microbe may redefine chemistry of life"