Nasa news conference (re: Arsenic-based life form?)

Why would he pay up? You lost. Your bet was that they would "find nothing", but they didn't "find nothing", they found something - a bacteria that can metabolize and incorporate arsenate instead of phosphate.Did you think you were making a bet that they would announce alien life? That's not the bet you said you were making, though.

They're in the science business, actually. Not all that much, actually. How much money do you think it costs to listen to the radio? "Nothing to show?" Quite wrong. Wow! signal - Wikipedia

BTW, just wanted it on record: Message 14Not the world's most amazing prediction (yet, somehow, better than any "prophecy" Buz has ever shown in the Bible...)

I don't think it's "every", though. Actually I don't think they even checked "every", they cultured the bacterium on an arsenate media and then found arsenate in the bacterium's DNA. So, at best all they know is that this strain can substitute arsenate for phosphate in deoxynucleotides.That's pretty cool, but is there evidence of arseneylation of proteins, for instance? (Activating enzymes by phosphorylation is another important biological function of phosphate.) Just based on the morphological differences that emerge in the cells on arsenate media seems to indicate that the changeover isn't a completely transparent process for the cell, so it wouldn't surprise me if these unique nucleotide-arsenates are being localized to very specific cell processes.I'm not trying to be all up on PZ's dick about this (hometown shout-out, yo!) but I think he's mostly right - this is probably going to merit little more than a sidebar in most biochemistry texts. It's cool, but not really a game-changer. Most people studying biology or biochemistry already kind of assume that the only inviolable rule is that there are no inviolable rules.

Not necessarily. Maybe the arsenic-substituted ATP is specifically directed to nucleic acid synthesis.I'd like to know if I'm wrong, though. Well, I'd take that bet, I guess, but it depends what you're asking. Are you asking them if we would ever find "arsenic-based life", as this has been erroneously described; or are you asking them if we would ever find bacteria with mutations that have allowed them to be arsenic-tolerant? I don't think you'd have found many skeptics for the latter point.

New in what way? Arsenate is pretty similar, chemically, to phosphate. That is, after all, why it's a poison and why these bacteria can use it.Genuine new chemistry would be something like the UWash group that designed a new enzyme that catalyzes a Diels-Alder reaction ("Computational Design of an Enzyme Catalyst for a Stereoselective Bimolecular Diels-Alder Reaction", Science 329, 309) That's a form of chemistry that, to our knowledge, no living thing performs.Again, I think this is neat - it's just not a game-changer. They only found it because they already speculated it was possible, and on that basis they went looking for it just precisely where you would expect to find it - a low-phosphorus, high arsenic environment. Didn't I speculate about this possibility a few months ago? I assure you, I'm not clairvoyant, I just made a guess based on phosphorus and arsenic being in the same period. I made a point about competition, too, and that holds up - when phosphorus is present, I doubt this strain uses any arsenic at all.

I'm not saying it's not cool.

I'm not sure that's correct. They did tests where they cultured on radiolabeled arsenate media and then fractioned the cells by organic extraction and centrifugation, and they found their radiolabeled arsenate in the fractions corresponding to proteins, nucelic acids, and lipids.That's pretty suggestive, I would say.