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Henry Bortman / 2010
Other scientists are analyzing the controversial strain of bacteria that biologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues found in California's Mono Lake.
It's been one year since researchers shook up the scientific world by claiming they bred bacteria that used arsenic in place of phosphorus, and the controversy is still simmering: The lead researcher and her critics say they're taking a closer look at the microbe at the center of the "weird life" claims.
After hitting the highs and the lows of academic acclaim, Felisa Wolfe-Simon has left her original research group and joined up with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California to continue her research into the bacterium known as GFAJ-1, which gets its name from the acronym for "Give Felisa a Job." (No joke!)
"There is so much work to do we're focusing on that and look forward to communicating our efforts in the coming months," Wolfe-Simon told me in an email this week.
Meanwhile, Wolfe-Simon's highest-profile critic, University of British Columbia microbiologist Rosie Redfield, took on the task of replicating the GFAJ-1 experiment. "I'm doing this even though I agree with all the other researchers who said this result is almost certainly wrong," Redfield told me. "Scientifically, it's really kind of a waste of time to try to replicate this yourself. But there's always the possibility that you could be wrong. And more than that, there was just a general sense that, you know, somebody should try."
Redfield has sent purified DNA samples to collaborators at Princeton University for mass spectrometry analysis — to see whether any arsenic was really taken up into the molecular structure. "We just got the DNA from Rosie Redfield," one of those collaborators, Leonid Kruglyak, told me this week. A graduate student in Kruglyak's lab, Marshall Louis Reaves, is currently working out the protocols for analyzing the DNA.
"We want to be able to fragment the DNA and run the fragments on the mass spectrometer," Krugylak said. "Those fragments should look quite different in the mass spectrometer if there is arsenate."
Just today, another team of researchers, led by Simon Silver of the University of Illinois at Chicago, announced that they have sequenced GFAJ-1's genome and will be analyzing it for new clues in the case.
Argonne National Laboratory's Jack Gilbert, a member of the team, characterized himself as a "100 percent skeptic" about the findings announced a year ago, but said that the gene sequence was still worth having. He and his colleagues have already found some interesting genetic twists, even if there's no evidence of arsenic in the DNA. "It's interesting to have this information to determine what the mechanism might be if other evidence shows this to be true," he explained.
Gilbert said it was mere coincidence that the genome sequence was published online exactly one year after Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues kicked off the controversy. "I hadn't even considered that today was the anniversary," he told me.
Why all the fuss?
The case of GFAJ-1 is significant on more than one level.
If the central claim of the original paper holds true, that means the machinery of life can be tinkered with to replace one seemingly essential chemical — phosphorus — with a different chemical that's seemingly inimical to life. One of Wolfe-Simon's original collaborators, Arizona State University astrobiologist Paul Davies, has long maintained that "weird life," built on a different biochemical platform, could exist right under our noses and we wouldn't know it.
The prospect of weird life on Earth would also argue in favor of widening the search for weird life on other worlds, perhaps as close as Mars or the Saturnian moon Titan. That's what led NASA to tout the research a year ago as having extraterrestrial implications. "The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, an associate administrator at the space agency. The news reports went even farther. Here's a typical headline: "NASA Discovers Alien Life in California."
Actually, what Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues did was to take an existing strain of salt-loving bacterla from California's Mono Lake, and try to breed it in the presence of high concentrations of arsenic. GFAJ-1 emerged as the best prospect: The research team said it seemed to take hold in the high-arsenic environment, and they said their molecular analysis suggested that arsenic-based compounds known as arsenates were incorporated in the place of phosphates.
The bacteria in the arsenic-rich culture weren't aliens at all. But for many chemists and microbiologists, the research team's claims, published online by the journal Science on Dec. 2, 2010, were as hard to believe as reports of a UFO landing.
One chemist, Steven Benner of the Florida-based Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, said he bet Wolfe-Simon $100 that the arsenic wasn't taken up in the DNA. Benner said in an email this week that the proposition was "still in limbo ... so the bet is not yet collected." (Wolfe-Simon told me she doesn't remember the bet.)
The skepticism over the reported results erupted almost immediately in a wave of blog postings and Twitter updates from commentators and scientists, including Redfield. As a result, the #arseniclife case quickly became a case study for instant peer review, mediated by the Internet. It also turned into a case study for open science, in which researchers share their results as they become available rather than holding them back until they're published in a journal.
Redfield emerged as a strong voice, for the skeptics as well as for the open-science movement. Her technical criticisms focused on the way that the bacteria samples were handled. "The way they isolated their DNA was almost 'I can't believe they did this' badly done," she told me this week. Such criticism led Science's editors to hold back the on-paper publication of the research for months, until eight sets of technical comments could be collected from Redfield and other observers and vetted through peer review. Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues were also given space to respond to the technical comments.
"That was pretty unprecedented," said Ginger Pinholster, director of the Office of Public Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal Science.
The next steps
Since then, the focus has shifted from the headlines to the labs. A Popular Science profile of Wolfe-Simon created a bit of a stir a couple of months ago: She was quoted as saying that she was "basically evicted" from her research group and worried that "it's quite possible that my career is over."
But during this week's email exchange, Wolfe-Simon told me that the "Popular Science article quotes were not what I said," and that "what matters now is what these organisms are telling us about biology, and that is my focus." Here are some reflections on the one-year anniversary from one of her emails to me:
"What a busy year it has been!
"With the generous support of NASA, we are able now to dive deep and explore this scientific discovery. After such a discovery comes the time-intensive process of rigorous testing. We aim to unravel the mechanisms behind how this microbe accomplishes the ability to flourish and grow despite uptake and utilization of arsenic. This systematic rigorous testing is critical and needed to build upon an initial discovery of this type.
"To this end, I have joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with Dr. John Tainer and his group there. LBNL provides the diverse intellectual and material resources of a major national laboratory, affording us the opportunity to pursue our efforts to test multiple aspects and implications of the work efficiently and stringently. LBNL synergistically complements the generous financial support from NASA.
"Currently, we have made significant headway in optimizing the growth conditions of GFAJ-1 and preparing samples for a wide range of analyses, including biomolecule crystallization and metabolite characterization. There is so much work to do we're focusing on that and look forward to communicating our efforts in the coming months. ...
"I maintain my serious commitment to science and the process of data-driven research. I look forward to speaking with you some time in the not too distant future after we make additional scientific progress."
Other researchers are delving into the mysteries of GFAJ-1 as well, even though they don't think the claims about arseno-DNA and other "weird life" wonders will hold up. "I don't have any money for this," Redfield told me. "This is just a side project in what would be my spare time, if professors have any spare time."
Redfield says the projects she gets paid for are more likely to be scientifically productive, but they're not as interesting to the general public. "This struck me as an opportunity to do science openly in a circumstance where people would be actually interested in what I'm doing, and what the results were," she said.
Now the fruits of her GFAJ-1 labors are in the hands of Kruglyak and his colleagues. If the arsenic in the samples has really been incorporated in the DNA, rather than merely representing sample contamination, traditional genetic sequencing techniques would not work. "They could give all sorts of unpredictable results," Kruglyak said. That's why mass spectrometry has to come into play.
Kruglyak can't predict how long it will take to get the answers. "It always takes longer than whatever I would say," he told me. "I would hope it's weeks, not months."
Meanwhile, Gilbert and his colleagues will continue studying GFAJ-1's genetic makeup. He told me "there's nothing spectacularly amazing" about the bacteria, which was not subjected to the high-arsenic treatment applied by Wolfe-Simon's team and by Redfield. But Gilbert said the raw bacteria's genome has some intriguing twists nevertheless.
"What is quite interesting is that this has very few arsenic resistance genes, i.e., it does not have the typical suite of genes that would make the cell resistant to arsenic in the environment," he told me in an email. Further study of the genome may at last point to an explanation for GFAJ-1's affinity for arsenic — but as of today, one year after the bacteria came onto the world scene, Gilbert can't predict what that explanation might be.
"We will prod and poke at this thing for another year, and see if there's anything more interesting," he said.
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Got smoke. Fire is not far away.
.
Nice article Alan. Thank you.
Something on your nose.
Really?
Apparently you are unable to appreciate something well written and informative.
How is this different than the bacteria found around ocean thermal vents that use hydrogen sulfide for chemosynthesis?
Johnny, just to be clear here, the implication you're making is that Rusty has something to personally gain by sycophantically sucking up to the author of this blog. However, since we're all essentially equal here, and no one, with exception of Mind Rattler is actually jockeying for a paying gig alongside Alan (see post #7.5), or any other special consideration, there's nothing to be lost or gained in paying a compliment and showing a little respect to one's host. It's called being polite, you might try it sometime.
P.S. Yes it is a nice article Alan, well balanced and informative. I thank you as well. Keep up the great work. I enjoy your science column more than any other I read with regularity. Now can I have a job? (Just kidding).
If we are ever attacked by non carbon based life forms, it might be nice to have these random bacteria around.
Why it's still a carbon based life form?
She manipulated the DNA. As soon as I heard that when the story was first published years ago I thought "She created an organism. How accurate can her finding be?" Talk about cherry picking...she engineered the cherry.
It's true she created the organism. But it should be impossible to create/breed/engineer a creature that incorporates arsenic in the place of phosphorus. It's like saying you discovered quartz crystals are alive. It hardly matters if you built them yourself, it should still be impossible.
I don't think anybody ever suggested this was a natural organism that lives in the wild, having learned to use arsenic on its own.
Not that it matters but I don't think that's exactly correct. All she did was remove phosphorous from the culture and introduce additional arsenic compounds. The bacterial strain in the culture which adapted and thrived in that environment is the one under discussion.
Even if she had "engineered the cherry" through a recombinant DNA procedure, the scientific impact would be exactly the same.
But it didn't adapt and "thrive." They then re-added P- and the organism grew at a much faster rate. The only difference was that the intracellular volume was 1.5 times normal. They found what they called large, vaculole-like structures that might have accounted for the increase in the organism's size.
One thing that always bugged me is that they never, to my knowledge, explained how or even if the organism would use As+ for DNA and ATP synthesis.
One thing they did was to perform a phenol-choloroform extraction, and then let the DNA, proteins, and other non-DNA material soak in water to hydrolyze. The DNA was sitting in gel with the As+ and P-, and they analyzed the DNA in the gel. There was a lot more arsenic than phosphate in the gel, and gel is sticky. As someone pointed out, arsenic-oxygen-carbon is not stable in water and breaks down very quickly. So the arsenic stuck, not the phosphate.
Which contaminated it. Pure and simple.
The whole article is reporting that many people are critics of the find, and there will be more tests before it is proven or disproven. Basically there is no news here.
I started out writing this just as a one-year update, because it was so covered a year ago. But it turns out that there were some developments that, in some circles, could constitute news. First, Wolfe-Simon left her old research group under what appears from the outside to be something of a cloud, but is actually continuing the work with a new group. So the "weird life" research goes on. Second, the biggest critic of the research has actually coaxed the bacteria to grow under a variety of conditions, including a high-arsenic environment (but apparently with a smidgen of phosphorus), and the DNA from those organisms is being analyzed. Third, the bacteria's genome has been sequenced, and there are some interesting things to be seen in that genome relating to arsenic tolerance.
Sorry it doesn't measure up to the "Alien Life Found on Earth" story, but I thought it was still worth doing.
One thing I meant to bring up in the article that I didn't was how I expect all this to turn out. I expect that this will end up somewhere between the ALH84001 Mars meteorite nanofossil story and the cold-fusion story. Nothing confirmatory will be found in the follow-up research, the scientists behind the original research won't "give up," and the arsenic-life claims will hang in a limbo with not all that much direct effect on the scientific inquiry into the prospects for a "shadow biosphere." But they will be remembered, they may inform the design of future experiments, and I probably will be writing about them again four years from now, for the fifth anniversary. That's just my surmise at this point, and I could definitely be wrong either way. In fact, I'm sure I'll be wrong in some way.
Alan, thanks for the update. I re-read the article looking to find your comment concepts in the article, and the following did not come to me from reading the article,
And I missed the implication that the gene sequencing was already done. Apparently the following statement in the article implies this,
And the following is a repeat of what the article said. It is a vague conclusion. What is interesting about it? It's similar in effect to writing, "something about it was unique."
Alan, so do you have any cutting edge news related to Cold-Fusion? A well connected and informed colleague was telling me about an Australian breakthrough that was about to become big news a few years ago, but haven't heard anything since. Thanks in advance for your input.
So many non-science critics of science seem to have little understanding of exactly how science works. In real science (as opposed to fantasy science) one proposes a theory that encompasses all the known facts. In this case it was that organisms can live in conditions, including extreme levels of environmental arsenic, that are not viable in traditional models. Then experiments are run and data collected to support or contradict the theory. Even if the theory collapses, valuable data is collected and future science tends not to waste time in that same footprints. But if a theory appears to be supported, it is then published with a call for others to replicate the results. Other scientists try to both replicate the results by duplicating the experiments and to use the results as "stepping stones" to take it a step forward. Critics of a theory can try to replicate with special attention to areas they do not quite believe and supporters tend to keep the basic structure and just enlarge the experiments. But in either case they also proiduce useful science that is equally valuable with the original.
The implication of scientific misconduct by some of the posters is waaaaaay off the beam. This is not scientific misconduct so much as the lack of understanding by the great unwashed of the scientific method itself, despite that being taught rigorously somewhere around the sixth grade.
The scientific misconduct comes when you have people withion the science community see new research as threatening, especially to their own turf of field of research. They frequently use the media to plead their case (always in an absence of supporting data.) There are always a number of them going on at any given time. For example right now there is a similar situation going on with with Schmidt at Gobekli Tepe and a particular researcher who makes millions a year from textbook sales and directs the largest dig that would lose importance as a result of Gobekli Tepe. There is another with the neutrino speeds greater than that of photons from CERN. Both are very upsetting to lots of applecarts, but neither is especially a case of scientific misconduct. The former revolves around whether a unifying theory is premature and the latter around whether some element of the experiment was not as designed. But in either case it is real science at work and working just as it should.
The most (in)famous example of this was Isaac Newton and his "Laws" of Motion. He proposed this conjecture when he was the head of the Royal Society. Almost immediately about 1/3 of the members said that the Laws of Motion were a pretty construct, but very much useless except as a theoretical rule of thumb. Essentially it was a two-body solution that lacked any two-body problems. Newton responded by efforts in the media and in letters to his backers (versus experiments and data) and essentially fired about 1/3 of the Royal Academy. The great advance that he "contributed" actually ended setting back science by about 100 years by stopping serious lines of inquiry as some sort of scientific heresy that contradicted "laws" that could never be proven. And NASA still has to make multiple mid-course corrections on the way to Mars because Newton won.
Science is fun and interesting. I envy Alan his job. Real life, whenproperly savored, is so much more interesting than fantasy and even in science the unfolding of stories is often a work in progress with no skipping to the last pages to see who did it.
Hi Alan,
It is still worth doing! I'm a little surprised that the "biggest critic" almost didn't bother because he was so sure the results wouldn't hold up. But that's what science is about--you see if you can replicate (or not) someone else's experiments. The only way to disprove Wolf is to try to replicate her work. You can't do it sitting in the ivory tower.
The fact that this organism was created does is NOT the point. The point is that the organism became something else that we have never seen, a NON carbon based life form that continued to thrive. It is about what it SHOWS us to be and the possibilities about life. To downplay that thought about a proven fact is just silly.
Please excuse my typo. Thanks.
Where did it say non carbon based?
I've always believed that there are extreme possibilities of 'wierd life' throughout the Universe, for we as Humans have had only one place to study the processes of life, and that would be here on Earth. Yet, as we start to venture out into the deeper into the cosmos through many advancements in science, chemistry and technology, we are finally beginning to truly surmise the scope that encompasses that of which is our 'viewable' or 'distinguishable' Universe. And in the vastness of this Universe, the possibility of life unlike anything we could even begin to fathom is no longer impossible. I've always imagined creatures made of fire, living in thousand degree atmospheres, such as our Sun, or creatures living in atmospheres nearing absolute zero temperature, or creatures living in seemingly inhospitable conditions.
My belief goes as far as stating that in the vastness of our Universe there might actually be elements not abundantly available in our cosmic neighborhood. Elements that would change our most basic understandings of physics, due to the fact that our current sciences are based on the elements we currently have access to, which may be incomplete. Much like the flora and fauna of the Earth, some creatures or minerals can only found on specific parts of the planet due, if this is the case here on Earth, we can surmise this may also be the case in the grand scheme of things, as it pertains to the vastness of our Universe.
Those are my two cents. I feel these theories will one day be proven correct, and hope one day they will be, maybe hundreds of thousands of years from now. Well, so long as humans actually make it that far into the future, I believe we will.
Thanks Alan, for your work. Yes, I've been critical in the past, but only when you mix religion with science, considering this is a Science & Tech section of MSNBC, just doesn't work. Much like religion should be kept from politics; it should also be kept off the scientific features of our news and media outlets. There's simply no need for it, for it doesn't help in any way, our scientific and technological aspirations. And if you look back into history, ‘divine’ influences tend to impede the progression of science time and time again.
Maybe give us a little longer time to review and edit our grammar, that would be nice. Four minutes to proof read our grammar is just not enough sometimes. Thanks!
Had just finished proofing my copy and all of a sudden the button dissapeared, was about to click it too, to save my edits. ARG!
So I will post the grammatical errorless version next, maybe you can overwrite the original with the one below, up to you.
I've always believed that there are extreme possibilities of 'weird life' throughout the Universe, for we as Humans have had only one place to study the processes of life, and that would be here on Earth. Yet, as we start to venture out into the deeper into the cosmos through many advancements in science, chemistry and technology, we are finally beginning to truly surmise the scope that encompasses that of which is our 'viewable' or 'distinguishable' Universe. And in the vastness of this Universe, the possibility of life unlike anything we could even begin to fathom is no longer impossible. I've always imagined creatures made of fire, living in thousand degree atmospheres, such as our Sun, or creatures living in atmospheres nearing absolute zero temperature, or creatures living in seemingly inhospitable conditions.
My belief goes as far as wanting to state that in the vastness of our Universe there might actually be elements not abundantly available in our cosmic neighborhood. Elements that would change our most basic understanding of physics, due to the fact that our current sciences are based on the elements we currently have access to, which may be wholly incomplete. Much like the flora and fauna of the Earth, some creatures or minerals can only found on specific parts of the planet. If such is the case here on Earth, we can surmise this may also be the case in the grand scheme of things, as it pertains to the vastness of our Universe.
Those are my two cents. I feel these theories will one day be proven, and sincerely hope they will be, maybe hundreds of thousands of years from now. Well, so long as humans actually make it that far into the future. I believe we will.
Thanks Alan, for your work. Yes, I've been critical in the past, but only when you mix religion with science, considering this is a Science & Tech section of MSNBC, just doesn't work. Much like religion should be kept from politics; it should also be kept off the scientific features of our news and media outlets. There's simply no need for it, for it doesn't help in any way, our scientific and technological aspirations. And if you look back into history, ‘divine’ influences tend to impede the progression of science time and time again.
I like your perspective, can’t grasp the fire creature thing but, totally agree with the rest.
I try to compose in my word processor first, my thoughts travel faster than the mechanics of my fingers and spelling will ever keep up with. However those who are much more dexterous than I get their comments in quicker.
Hope your day goes well.
Thanks for the thoughts, Mind Rattler. I'm so glad you're part of the circle here, and please feel free to weigh in at any time. I can take it. Just a warning that in a week or two there's going to be the usual holiday roundup of science/religion perspectives, so you might want to read around that one when it comes up. (I think it'll be Dec. 19, the day before the beginning of Hanukkah.)
Thanks guys, much appreciated. Love sharing my critical thought processes with the masses in hopes of striking a spark of interest in the minds of people. And most of all, love getting feedback from the masses on the ideas I bring to the table. Unfortunately, the masses tend to skip on the science sections of the news and head directly to the entertainment section, or as I'd like to call it, the useless section.
Alan, keep up the good work. And if you need someone to write along side you, by all means, give me a holler. Keep in mind, I am by trade, a technology engineer, in essence someone who can bring much more than far-fetched scientific theories to the table.
Experiment.
"I've always believed that there are extreme possibilities of
'wierd'weird life' throughout the Universe, for we as Humans have had only one place to study the processes of life, and that would be here on Earth. Yet, as we start to venture out into the deeper into the cosmos through many advancements in science, chemistry and technology, we are finally beginning to truly surmise the scope that encompasses that of which is our 'viewable' or 'distinguishable' Universe. And in the vastness of this Universe, the possibility of life unlike anything we could even begin to fathom is no longer impossible. I've always imagined creatures made of fire, living in thousand degree atmospheres, such as our Sun, or creatures living in atmospheres nearing absolute zero temperature, or creatures living in seemingly inhospitable conditions.My belief goes as far as
statingwanting to state that in the vastness of our Universe there might actually be elements not abundantly available in our cosmic neighborhood. Elements that would change our most basicunderstandingsunderstanding of physics, due to the fact that our current sciences are based on the elements we currently have access to, which may be wholly incomplete. Much like the flora and fauna of the Earth, some creatures or minerals can only found on specific parts of the planetdue, if this. If such is the case here on Earth, we can surmise this may also be the case in the grand scheme of things, as it pertains to the vastness of our Universe.Those are my two cents. I feel these theories will one day be proven
correct, and sincerely hopeone daythey will be, maybe hundreds of thousands of years from now. Well, so long as humans actually make it that far into the future,. I believe we will.Thanks Alan, for your work. Yes, I've been critical in the past, but only when you mix religion with science, considering this is a Science & Tech section of MSNBC, just doesn't work. Much like religion should be kept from politics; it should also be kept off the scientific features of our news and media outlets. There's simply no need for it, for it doesn't help in any way, our scientific and technological aspirations. And if you look back into history, ‘divine’ influences tend to impede the progression of science time and time again."
If you have found a way to separate science from religion, or politics then this would be worthy of publication.
Of course mixing them in a discussion, just would not work since they should be separated.
But never the less please offer us the basis of the separation, which is not based on human history.
The point is not to play word games, but suggest that there is some progressive value in comparison even between the mutually exclusive.
The core of DNA being phosphorus, with the environment being progressively more arsenate, should be reflected in DNA even is involves phosphorus and changes in the genetics. The value of the comparisons of the same bacterial strains should be clear, because comparisons tend to eliminate much of the complexity of having to eliminate. Comparative genetics is an obvious choice to compare the extremes.
The point of controversy, is not about who said what about whom and when, but look closer. If the natural audience for the announcement could have restrained themselves, it would have benefited the public more. I speculate that this might be so because, if it takes the experts this long to confirm or refute this claim, with parallel experiments, different experiments or experiments made with better methods.
The fact seems to be that this experiment takes longer to confirm indicates to me that the tools being used and methods and resources are not as robust as we imagine them to be. It seems as if arsenic runs afoul of conventional experiments, not widely performed, largely unexplored and even seen as not relevant to the main body of current work. The most likely benefit of repeating this experiment will be to improve the way that genetic analysis is done, to make it more sensitive smaller details, and even not be impaired by problematic arsenic.
If the original experiment, was done as described, I would have expected that given the impact, that it would have been repeated several times over, and have been confirmed independently several times over. This apparently is not the world we live in today, it takes money in grants and little research if any takes place freely otherwise, in this sort of world we have to know in advance if an idea will have commercial value, meaning that your idea may not funded well enough to be discovered.
Speculate that this odd experiment would be valued if it resulted in better tools and faster evaluations and more through and robust advances in genetics. Speculate that knowing the sensitivity of life to arsenic and other toxins that we can learn how survive in industrial waste effluents or may be to decontaminate places to live (arsenic in water). Twitter and Facebook may look like the profitable results of research, and hundred fifty thousand apps choices, but the value of spreading information widely will be reduced when we can no longer separate what part of that vast information is true from the larger set information that either not true or not refutable (human history, sorry).
Maybe we should check out the DNA of the republicans and see if they are an alien invasion or not. Sure looks that way.
Couldn't help myself, guys.
From a chemical perspective, this paper instantly looked wrong and hopelessly naive. Phosphorus-oxygen-carbon linkages are stable in water while arsenic-oxygen-carbon linkages are highly prone to break spontaneously. In the old school model where you send your papers to a journal for anonymous (and what should be confidential) reviews, you have the opportunity to benefit from someone telling you that you're an idiot in private, rather than all over the Internet. Career advice for scientists who want to publish in open journals: get some informal feedback from people you trust before winding up the PR machine.
Agreed
Wow is this a staged photo. Clean knees, no tan, not even red skin for doing that kind of work in the sun. colored bottles perfectly lined and all in the composition. Brim of hat isn't sweaty, or dirty. loose hair, shirt cuffs and hat strap dangling in the middle of all that sensitive chemistry--really? The black bag in the rear is obviously important, but it's behind her where it can't be reached.
What is an unstaged photo intended for publication? Like the pretty colored bottles?
Maybe she's neat, clean and organized. That might not occur to a slob, so I thought I would toss it out there.
Wolfe-Simon. What a joke.
There is no arsenic based life...just a non-scientist with poor lab technique and poor knowledge of chemistry prematurely publishing non-results.
It is no coincidence she did that while at NASA.
"That intellectual torpor maybe sufficient to earn a job at some disaster
prone part of the world like Chernobyl or NASA, but it won't cut the mustard
with me." - Professor Maximillian Arturo
I am really interested to see if this new bacteria could be behind Morgellons. We lived in an area heavily sprayed with Roundup and infested with mosquitoes. 2 dogs and I came down with some kind of "Weird Life" organism. Been to 6 MD and 2 ND doctors. Only detectable when looking at fresh blood slides, not by any premade lab tests. Tested negative for Lyme. But definately have something that needs more study.
You might want to up your dosage of anti-psychotics. "Morgellons" are nothing but colored fibers from people's clothing.
What, exactly, is supposedly "detectable when looking at fresh blood slides"? Do you think you've got red and blue fibers growing in your blood? If so, I repeat my initial reccomendation.
Unnecessary diversion from real science. They should be busy studying genomes to cure real diseases rather than searching for "weird life" to claim their 15 minutes of fame.
Bad science.
You obviously know nothing about science or the process. Please expand on your remark that they should be "... studying genomes to cure real (sic) diseases .." Developing an understanding of bacteria that can thrive in strange environments is an important thing. I believe that this scientist and her colleagues got carried away by the implications - they may well be guilty of sloppy science, but don't criticize the original concept. Considering that phosphorus is the major limiting nutrient for agricultural production (the worlds major supply is now limited to one deposit in Morocco), any suggestion that we can have a life form that doesn't use P is worth investigating seriously.
The possiblity is intriguing. It deserves to be checked and verified or checked and discarded. That's how science works, and ain't it grand!
What amazed me more than the original press release one year ago was the reaction it caused in the science community. Some scientists actually seemed to believe that if something is different from science as we know it then it can't really be true so fraud or error has to be the culprit. Then I remember all the scientists throughout history that were ridiculed and harassed long before their discoveries were accepted as proved facts.
To be a cutting edge scientist you have to have a thick skin. If you study things outside the norm you have to be sure you can brave the heat from your fellow scientist.
I beieve it was Carl Sagan who once said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." We'll see if that materializes.
Whether or not I believe this aside...
Did anyone else immediately think of the movie "Evolution"?
I, for one, applaud the fact that Mr. Boyle joins in on the discussions of his articles.
Life is not what it is. Rather, it is what it does.