NASA's Arsenic-Eating "Alien" Bacteria Is More Like Science-Fiction
Posted by Alex_Pasternack on Tuesday, Dec 07, 2010
Felisa Wolfe-Simon, the lead finder of arsenic-eating microbes
No aliens
There’s a furor brewing over those “alien” microbes that NASA scientists last week said they discovered. Sure, the bacteria managed to grow despite being fed arsenic, one of the most poisonous chemicals known to life. But, as they admitted and we noted, a bit puzzled, their microbes were still sneaking in a little bit of the phosphorous that they typically need to manufacture DNA, as in this animation:
This wasn’t an attempt to fake it, other researchers have argued, but more just the result of sloppy lab work. “If this data was presented by a PhD student at their committee meeting,” wrote microbiologist Rosie Redfield, "I’d send them back to the bench to do more cleanup and controls.”
Harvard microbiologist Alex Bradley points to more flaws: submerging DNA in water as they analyzed it, the NASA researchers should have seen those arsenic compounds supposedly present in the microbe’s genes break into fragments. But the DNA stayed intact — meaning that it was made of durable phosphate.
But even the NASA researchers acknowledged that they lacked a smoking gun that arsenic was present in the microbes’ DNA. They acknowledged they were feeding the bacteria salts that were contaminated with a tiny amount of phosphate, enough, they continued, for the bacteria to make a living off of. And they reported that the microbe, GFAJ-1, grew much better when fed phosphorus, as if it were starving and desperate not to have to eat its lab-coat torturers’ gross arsenic. And the microbes stuffed with arsenic came out all mutated, 60 percent larger than cells grown with phosphorus, and with large, empty internal spaces.
Of course at the time, as we were coming off the brief high that NASA’s “extraterrestrial” promises gave us, we were all perhaps finding ways to be more positive about all of this. How else, after all, could you grow microbes without phosphate? And c’mon, give them a hand for getting so much arsenic in there! Impressive stunt, GFAJ-1! Good assist, NASA dudes.
But yeah, maybe not the finest lab science. Let’s get back to looking for those aliens, shall we?
Related:
NASA Finds New Toxic Life Form, Apologizes For Not Finding Aliens
NASA FOUND THE ALIENS IN CALIFORNIA; COULD DESTROY LIFE AS WE KNOW IT
Beware of Promises of New Earths
Getting It Right, Wrongly: Embattled Scientist Marc Hauser’s Ironic Quest for Morality
PHOTO: Henry Bortman
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