NASA Announcement: New Life Form

By Heather B on December 2nd, 2010

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NASA made a highly anticipated announcement at 2:00 pm Thursday afternoon – one that changes the definition of life as we know it.

Researchers working in the harsh Mono Lake area of California (pictured right) have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth that is able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic, rather than phosphorus, the NASA website reports.

“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,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate.

“This finding of an alternative biochemistry makeup will alter biology textbooks and expand the scope of the search for life beyond Earth. “

Though arsenic is chemically similar to phosphorus, it is poisonous to most life on Earth.

“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,” Felisa Wolfe-Simon, the Mono Lake team’s lead scientist said.

The California lake was initially chosen by her research team due to its “unusual chemistry” including “its high salinity, high alkalinity, and high levels of arsenic.”

To read more about this study, visit the NASA website.

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