Great post, Charles! Absolutely right.

I once had a girlfriend who had six toes.

Change is the only constant.

Five because we use a base-10 number system

Fantastic observation. I wonder what other constants we take for granted will be proven inconstant?

Just for the record, because this has been missrepresented almost everywhere, they didn't find bacteria that had substituted phosphorous for arsenic. They found extremophile bacteria and essentially "trained" it to use arsenic in the place of phosphorous. The arsenic employing bacteria are lab creations.

This news is undoubtedly very cool. However it's not at all that a new type of life has been discovered. It's that there is a demonstration that life is less constrained than it would appear from mere observation of current life and our evolutionary history.

Good Morning Charles,
I agree. It is the reason why science journals are peer reviewed. And why certain conclusions, ideas (Golden Rules?) are hotly debated. Global warming is but one example.

BTW, I recommend "Cool It" by Ondi Timoner (2010). I saw it a few weeks ago. It's about the Danish skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg.

I love the way science is always searching and finding new answers, always probing and reassessing old assumptions. Unlike religion, which remains stuck, inflexible, unbending.

Other way around, #4.

@ 6, thanks for that clarification.

@7 Global warming isn't a good example of a hotly debated topic, at least among scientists who know what they're talking about. The "controversy" over the reality of anthropogenic global warming was entirely manufactured by energy lobbies lurking behind front think tanks.

@Lynx...saying that the bacteria were "trained" to use Arsenic to replace phosphorus is somewhat misleading in that it implies a long, sequential process and that it's something other bacteria can do with the right "training", which is not the case. They are not lab creations. The researchers took mud directly from the lake and placed it in media void of phosphate, then washed away any remaining phosphate that may have been introduced from the lake mud. The bacteraia that were in the mud had to use some other element to grow, and they did. You're making it sound like a genetically engineered organism (a lab creation), and you are patently wrong about that.
Also, stating that a "new life form" is something other than the first example of a way in which "life is less constrained" than previously thought is just semantics. Finding an examploe that refutes one of the basic pillars of thought regarding the necessary biochemistry of life is, well, huge! It shouldn't be downplayed.

so, biologically, Avatar wasn't utter nonsensical bullshit?

@2. Three on each foot? Or something even more exotic?

No, six on each foot. Definitely exotic, alright.

@6 is correct. We bioengineered them to use the GATCP A part (Arsenic) instead of the P part (Phosphorus).

Still, it's proof that you can bioengineer methane-breathing pink unicorns from oxygen-breathing shetland ponies.

@12, thanks for more clarification.

@5 - Fantastic observation. I wonder what other constants we take for granted will be proven inconstant?

Paul Constant... ? HmmMMM?

No, he's not inconstant, just incontinent.

This should clear things up further:

"...we used arsenic as a selective agent and excluded phosphorus, a major requirement in all hitherto known organisms. However, GFAJ-1 is not an obligate arsenophile and it grew considerably better when provided with P[hosphorus]."

Phosphorus is **a major requirement in all hitherto known organisms.** This bacterium is the ONLY KNOWN LIFE FORM that can do this. It's a big deal.

Which continent is he in again?

Also note from above quote that the GFAJ-1 "prefers" phosphorus.

(full text at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/… )...of course not accessible to most :(

Nice alliteration in your final line there, Charles!

No, @6 and @16 you are wrong. The bacteria were not a lab creation, as has been said many, many times. Dr. Wolfe-Simon and her team took a sample from the lake and removed phosphate, putting it in an environment that only had arsenate. There was no bioengineering and no training or weaning or any of that.

She explicitly stated this in the press conference and it has been noted in everything she or her team has written.

@12 - But these bacteria did NOT refute basic pillars of thought regarding the necessary biochemistry of life. They still contain phosphorus and never were able to be phosphorus free. Furthermore, GFAJ-1 is far from an obligate arsenophile. In the lab conditions, the samples grew differently than in nature (with huge vacuoles full of a known stabilizer) and did not do nearly as well as they did in environments with phosphorus, which they significantly preferred whenever they could get it.

Furthermore, it IS incredibly important to consider that these bacteria did not exist this way naturally. They were forced to either grow or perish in arsenic in a lab (and it's relevant that the researchers admit reagents included trace PO4 impurities, which the bacteria synthesized and used). They ended up existing with 30x times less P than in nature which is cool, but not revolutionary.

What WOULD be revolutionary is if the phosphate-sugar bonds in the DNA backbone were effectively able to be aresenate-sugar bonds. This hasn't been verified, though, much less shown that any genetic material using arsenate in its structure can function properly. And just on a chemistry-related note, I'd think that some serious shit would have to be going on if it could without falling apart (aka a presence of something that could stop the hydrolization that should be occurring). If there is a way this bacteria created/used a substance to bond to arsenate to slow its normally volitile hydrolizing properties to the point that arsenate could exist in the backbone of a functional strand of DNA (the researchers’ theory/hope) that would be HUGE. But researchers don’t know the details of any of this.

To me it seems like great PR and incomplete research. In no way can this lead to a claim that arsenic is a substitute for phosphorus as a necessary building block of life. It seems more like one of the gajillions of fascinating ways that ol' sugar/phosphate bonded DNA havin’ organisms were able to evolve and adapt to their surroundings and it's very impressive! But we see this all the time.

And Charles: either way, you can’t compare observed rules for genetic expressions (like number of fingers) and essential properties of biological/chemical bonding. That’s like comparing “we found a weird new species of animal” to “we found a microbe that can teleport.” But if you’d like to read about a discovery that really WAS of this game-changing magnitude, read about chemotrophs. They changed EVERYTHING. Not only did they blow the food chain out of the water and show that sunlight is not necessary for life, but they have evolved into higher organisms and created entire independent ecosystems. It means there could be advanced organisms on a totally dark planet. It’s incredible.