Comments on: Weirdly Unweird: A Better End to the #Arseniclife Affair

By: MarkB

MarkB — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:20:37 +0000

Just a thought – that hashtag thing has already been beaten to death. I would have said ‘jumped the shark,’ but that expression has…. well, you know.

By: [LINK] “Weirdly Unweird: A Better End to the #Arseniclife Affair” « A Bit More Detail

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 20:03:26 +0000

[...] latest I’ve come across on the subject of the mooted arsenic-using Mono Lake bacteria is Carl Zimmer’s post at The Loom. As he concludes in his overview of the whole affair, nearly two years old, the bacteria in [...]

By: Chris Lawson

Chris Lawson — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 10:09:43 +0000

Sad that Wolfe-Simon and her team had a really neat idea about arsenic in biology and discovered something quite interesting, but over-reached in their conclusions. This had the makings of a solid paper. Even if they had responded sensibly to the early criticisms, they could have come out looking good.

By: Miriam Goldstein

Miriam Goldstein — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 01:44:55 +0000

Marine cyanobacteria (and some phytoplankton) CAN “distinguish” arsenic from phosphorus in phosphorus-limited environments, like the surface of the subtropical gyres. Arsenic is actually not too abundant in the surface ocean, but nutrients are even more scarce, so this is an issue for them.
Arbitrarily chosen example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3201022/

By: Stuff we linked to on Twitter last week | Highly Allochthonous

Stuff we linked to on Twitter last week | Highly Allochthonous — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 21:34:10 +0000

[...] it may not be #arseniclife, but a hyper-efficient phosphorous scavenger is still interesting. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/10/03/weirdly-unweird-a-better-end-to-the-arseniclife-af… (via [...]

By: Article: Weirdly Unweird: A Better End to the #Arseniclife Affair | The Loom « linkstream2 microblog

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 23:16:40 +0000

[...] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/10/03/weirdly-unweird-a-better-end-to-the-arseniclife-af… Share this:TwitterFacebook [...]

By: Maneesh

Maneesh — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:57:14 +0000

[posted yesterday, but my comment seems to have been eaten or might still be in moderation]

Hi Carl,
Your article suggests that phosphate is scarce relative to arsenate in Mono Lake:

“Imagine what it’s like for a microbe in Mono Lake, or in the lab of a particularly sadistic scientist. You’re drowning in arsenate, and in order to stay alive, to keep growing, you need to grab the precious few phosphate molecules drifting by.”

” GFAJ-1 is stuck in a place where phosphate is always scarce and arsenate is always dangerously copious.”

A paper (by Oremland):

http://www.monobasinresearch.org/research/arsenic/Mono_Arsenic_Review_Reprint.pdf

tells us that the concentration of phosphate is about twice that of arsenate in Mono Lake (Fig 1). This was at least partial motivation behind the skepticism as to why this bacteria would supposedly evolve a (profound) mechanism to deal with phosphate scarcity. GFAJ-1 may have 99 problems, phosphate scarcity ain’t one!

By: Rosie Redfield

Rosie Redfield — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:17:42 +0000

@Casey,

The first part of our work was an attempt to closely replicate the culture conditions used by Wolfe-Simon et al. – the conditions that, they claimed, caused GFAJ-1 to incorporate arsenic in place of phosphate in its molecules. The second part was different – we used different/better methods to purify and analyze the cells’ DNA, and these methods showed that the DNA did not contain significant arsenic.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:37:49 +0000

I totally agree with Casey. Wolfe-Simons’s been overconfident but it’s hard to seriously blame a reseacher for that. The fault entirely lies with Nature editors.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:35:34 +0000

I totally agree with Casey. Redfield’s been overconfident but it’s hard to seriously blame a reseacher for that. The fault entirely lies with Nature editors.