yes, and hope they don't develop a culinary interest in bipedal sapiens.
It's not nearly quite as simply as you're making it sound. First of all due to the discovery of this bacteria we're having to totally rethink what we call life because this form of life changes the definition. Also it's not that life just evolved this way because that's what it had to work with. Undisturbed, life evolved in those waters to survive a hostile environment but they still had a source for phospherous and therefore still used it just like every other form of life that we knew of. Then the scientists removed the phospherous and the thing evolved in real time to substitute Arsenic for phospherous and incorporate it into it's DNA thereby making it unlike any life we knew of.
Which for all intents and purposes would make it alien life. The headlines weren't misleading, people mislead themselves thru assumption.
So it's like finding a plant that can live without magnesium and substitute Calcium for everything. In other words like finding a form of life that doesn't match anything we know or understand about life.
HOW MANY TIMES have I asked you to "stay away"? My words my be "harsher"...but your actions are despicable! So, come up with a way for me to ignore you...and you won't have to put up with my "correcting" you. Deal?
Or...you could give me your address and we can settle this like men...real men...not little girls. Might shouldn't mean right...but sometimes it's just the right thing to do to an annoying bug.
Everyone keeps saying...it uses a TOXIC element now! OMG! It's completely different! No...both P and As are toxic! In fact, P is MUCH more "toxic" than As. It fucking catches fire when exposed to air! How much more "toxic" can you get?
VERSUSThe acute minimal lethal dose of arsenic in adults is estimated to be 70 to 200 mg or 1 mg/kg/day. Arsenic is related to the first five leading causes of non-accidental death in the United States, bringing the total to 1,525,675 related mortalities. EPA efforts are underway to reduce drinking water exposure to zero.[8] Leading causes of mortality in the world are all related to arsenic. These are[9] heart disease[10] (hypertension related cardiovascular), cancer,[11] stroke[12] (cerebrovascular diseases), chronic lower respiratory diseases,[13] and diabetes. These diseases are all related to the alteration of voltage dependent potassium channels.
For arsenic, the LD50 is between 15 and 30 mg/kg
Potassium is a dietary requirement for us, and we take up about 1-6 g per day at a requirement of 2-3.5 g per day. The total potassium amount in the human body lies somewhere between 110 and 140 g and mainly depends upon muscle mass. The muscles contain most potassium after red blood cells and brain tissue.
For Potassium the ld50 is several grams per kiligram.
P and As are in the same column...for MANY reactions, either "will work". Just as Mg and Ca are interchanged when concentrations are too high in plants. If you took out ALL the Mg...SOME plants COULD still live...just like the bacteria. This isn't some magic newly evolved life form. It's a bacteria that somehow can substitute Ar for P...a VERY close element. I'm sure there IS some lower life form that CAN use just Ca and not "need" Mg. Some algae perhaps. It just needs to be found.
Everyone keeps saying...it uses a TOXIC element now! OMG! It's completely different! No...both P and As are toxic! In fact, P is MUCH more "toxic" than As. It fucking catches fire when exposed to air! How much more "toxic" can you get? It's "toxic" to us...because it IS replacing the P and it will make you die...it doesn't make the bacteria die...that's all. Don't make a mountain out of a mole hill. It's like some people can't drink milk and others can. It's a metabolism difference...not some new life form!
Head,
I CAN'T ignore you...it comes up as "Moderators or administrators cannot be put on ignore"...believe me...I'm as tired of reading your BS as I can get. HOW MANY TIMES have I asked you to "stay away"? My words my be "harsher"...but your actions are despicable! So, come up with a way for me to ignore you...and you won't have to put up with my "correcting" you. Deal?
Or...you could give me your address and we can settle this like men...real men...not little girls. Might shouldn't mean right...but sometimes it's just the right thing to do to an annoying bug.
Interesting. Makes you wonder what other elements can be interchanged and still sustain life. I wonder if we will ever find a replacement for oxygen? If the backbone of DNA can be replaced the possibilities would seem endless IMO.
the other one that comes to mind... From sci-fi... is organisms which would use Si in place of C.
Nobody is saying "it uses a TOXIC element now! OMG! It's completely different!" well nobody but you, to give reason to the rest of what you're saying. That's not even close to an accurate description of what the discovery is about. If it was just merely substituting one thing for another that would be no big deal but it's not just substituting one for another but it's also incorporating the substitution into it's structure, it's very being. Even that's not the big news, the big news is that finding this changes the way we define life and that change changes where we might look to find undiscovered life.
Your comparison to a fictional plant that we just haven't found yet is riddiculous. If they were to find such a plant it would be just as amazing a find as this one was and would have the same effect of redefining how we think of life and where we might look for it.
As for this issue with Head, I wish the two of you would take your little battle to pm's. There is simply no reason why the rest of us should be forced to view it in the forums. I'll tell you this much though, you got some serious anger management issues if one person's opinion on a site for potheads angers you to the point of wanting to fight in real life.
Interesting. Makes you wonder what other elements can be interchanged and still sustain life. I wonder if we will ever find a replacement for oxygen? If the backbone of DNA can be replaced the possibilities would seem endless IMO.
What would you have said about THIS before you read this study? What would you have said to someone last month who talked about life using As instead of P? Something living right here on earth, using a completely NEW way of doing things? You would have said the same thing you're telling me...they're full of shit.
You, head, a few others have this "science is God" thing going on. You think the latest and greatest...is the pinnacle. It's not...we've barely made the first few steps. We don't even KNOW all the live on the planet...how CAN you sit there and say I'm wrong? Maybe next month a study WILL show an algae that doesn't have ANY Mg. You DON'T KNOW what's out there. You don't know how EVERYTHING works...yet you claim to now that some "study" say's it does. Get it? I'm the devils advocate here...where there's ONE "unique" life form...doesn't it follow that there may be more?
That's all I'm saying...don't be so sure of the "latest and greatest" this or that. ESPECIALLY when it's "groundbreaking". I'll bet in a few years, they'll find it wasn't so unique after all.
The fighting thing...I think he's a punk...I think he deserves a good whipping. He's a pain in my ass. I try to ignore him automatically but I get: "Sorry Grat3fulh3ad is a moderator/admin and you are not allowed to ignore him or her." So, I guess it'll have to be shear will power that restrains me from reading his drivel. He CAN grow, but his world views are a bit out there...I hate for people to be fooled by the rhetoric. I only push back when provoked...
All kinds...it's up to the organism whether it can survive. When one thing is missing, ANY atom/molecule with the same charge/shape sometimes get's used. The thing that saves us ALL from being "poisoned" is that the elements/molecules that DO readily get mistakenly used by likeforms...are rare enough not to cause problems.
Take hemoglobin...it's there to pick up O2 from the lungs. But CO get's picked up WAY easier...it will be completely gone before any O2 get's picked up. So WHY is this? Well...it doesn't matter that CO get's picked up...because we hardly ever get exposed to CO. We don't hang out in fires. It doesn't matter.
So, if you look long enough, in enough places, and do enough experiments to enough organisms...you going to find some "mutants" that can do some pretty amazing stuff. It's the theory of large numbers...if you have a million people, you get a one in a million event EVERY day...making it not so eventful any more. We've got a LOT of looking and experimenting left to go...don't get too excited just yet. More is coming...I guarantee it.