NASA’s great exo-biological announcement, not quite what you may have expected
But none the less very cool.
Anyone who has even a cursory interest in science, or astronomy specifically, or space heard about the “big announcement” of NASA had yesterday for a few days now. NASA was working hard to keep the whole thing hush-hush, so speculation abounded. My personal belief tended towards some discovery on Titan; not life per-se but further evidence of the possibility of life there.
Turns out that the big secret, which was let out of the bag a little early, was the discovery of GFAJ-1, terrestrial bacteria that incorporates arsenic into their biochemistry.
So what makes this such an amazing discovery?
First off all other known life on Earth uses a handful of elements for most of its biochemistry: carbon (thus why we are “carbon based”), hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, followed by phosphorous and last, sulfur, there are other elements, but these are the big six. Phosphorous for its part helps make up the backbone of all known life’s DNA, that is the long chains of sugars and phosphates that hold the “rungs” or nucleotides; so no phosphorous, no DNA backbone, no DNA, and thus no life as far as we knew.
Or so we thought.
That is where GFAJ-1 comes in, unique bacteria that instead of using phosphorous for the aforementioned DNA backbone construction like every other lifeform, it actually substitutes the chemically similar arsenic when subjected to an environment with high concentrations of the latter. To any other lifeform, large concentrations of arsenic are incredibly toxic, GFA-1 however have evolved the ability to incorporate arsenic as a viable substitute for building DNA molecules and therefore reproduction and life, something never seen before anywhere on Earth.
Alright, that is pretty cool, but what does this have to do with E.T.?
It shows that life is more diverse then previously known, and therefore more likely elsewhere in the universe. Until now, phosphorous was considered an absolute essential for all known types of life, but GFAJ-1 show that life could develop on a phosphorous poor world, expanding the possible range of worlds that could possibly harbor life as we understand it because we now know life has a wider range of possibilities.
I admit that doesn’t sound really “cool”, but in the realm of science and astrobiology, it’s immense. We have discovered over 400 worlds around other stars so far, two decades ago, we didn’t even know if exo-solar worlds even existed; we have discovered so much, learned that our universe is richer and more varied then previously conceived, now even more so then ever.
Anyone who has even a cursory interest in science, or astronomy specifically, or space heard about the “big announcement” of NASA had yesterday for a few days now. NASA was working hard to keep the whole thing hush-hush, so speculation abounded. My personal belief tended towards some discovery on Titan; not life per-se but further evidence of the possibility of life there.
Turns out that the big secret, which was let out of the bag a little early, was the discovery of GFAJ-1, terrestrial bacteria that incorporates arsenic into their biochemistry.
So what makes this such an amazing discovery?
First off all other known life on Earth uses a handful of elements for most of its biochemistry: carbon (thus why we are “carbon based”), hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, followed by phosphorous and last, sulfur, there are other elements, but these are the big six. Phosphorous for its part helps make up the backbone of all known life’s DNA, that is the long chains of sugars and phosphates that hold the “rungs” or nucleotides; so no phosphorous, no DNA backbone, no DNA, and thus no life as far as we knew.
Or so we thought.
That is where GFAJ-1 comes in, unique bacteria that instead of using phosphorous for the aforementioned DNA backbone construction like every other lifeform, it actually substitutes the chemically similar arsenic when subjected to an environment with high concentrations of the latter. To any other lifeform, large concentrations of arsenic are incredibly toxic, GFA-1 however have evolved the ability to incorporate arsenic as a viable substitute for building DNA molecules and therefore reproduction and life, something never seen before anywhere on Earth.
Alright, that is pretty cool, but what does this have to do with E.T.?
It shows that life is more diverse then previously known, and therefore more likely elsewhere in the universe. Until now, phosphorous was considered an absolute essential for all known types of life, but GFAJ-1 show that life could develop on a phosphorous poor world, expanding the possible range of worlds that could possibly harbor life as we understand it because we now know life has a wider range of possibilities.
I admit that doesn’t sound really “cool”, but in the realm of science and astrobiology, it’s immense. We have discovered over 400 worlds around other stars so far, two decades ago, we didn’t even know if exo-solar worlds even existed; we have discovered so much, learned that our universe is richer and more varied then previously conceived, now even more so then ever.