As we mentioned last Tuesday, NASA scheduled a press conference today to “discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”.  They didn’t disappoint. They announced they’ve found a new form of life in the alkaline, poisonous water Mono Lake, California. The bacteria, GFAJ-1, is not only able to coexist with arsenic, but it can also use the poisonous element as a nearly complete substitute for phosphorus, a feat no other known life form does to this extent.

Life like us uses a handful of basic elements in the majority of its biochemistry: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen for the most part. But phosphorus is also a critical element in two major ways: it’s used as the backbone of the long, spiral-shaped DNA and RNA molecules (think of it as the winding support structure for a spiral staircase and you’ll get the picture), and it’s part of the energy transport mechanism for cells in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). Without it, our cells would literally not be able to reproduce, and we’d be dead anyway if it were gone. There are many other ways phosphorus is used as well, including in cell membranes, bones, and so on. It’s a key element for all forms of life. [BadAstronomy]

All forms of life except this new one. Some life forms can use a very small amount of arsenic as a phosphorus substitute (arsenic is directly below phosphorus on the periodic table and shares some chemical properties after all), but nothing else has used arsenic as extensively as GFAJ-1.  This opens up the possibility of life on planets we would previously assume couldn’t sustain life.

Oceanographer Felisa Wolfe-Simon found that the bacterium could thrive with its cells full of arsenic and only trace amounts of phosphorus, or with its cells full of phosphorus and only trace amounts of arsenic. But there’s one thing that is perhaps the most amazing about GFAJ-1 (I’m sick of typing that, I’m calling it G-FAbulous). G-FAbulous incorporated arsenic into its DNA. What a badass.

It should be noted that G-FAbz fared better in a phosphorus-rich environment than it did in arsenic, which you should totally throw in his face if he ever starts bragging about how he metabolizes arsenic better than you.

[Sources: BadAstronomy, Gizmodo, NotExactlyRocketScience]

Researchers at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary and University of Strathclyde have discovered a way to kill superbugs like MRSA and C.diff using light.  Normally, light that kills bacteria is also harmful to human cells. They discovered a high intensity narrow spectrum (HINS) light that doesn’t harm humans but can excite molecules in bacteria, pushing them to commit cell suicide.  In studies, the HINS-light reduced bacteria on surfaces by 90% in an unoccupied room and reduced bacteria by 56 to 86% in a room occupied by a burn victim infected with MRSA. Note to self: add “burn victim infected with MRSA” to list of things to avoid becoming, above “telemarketer” but below “reality show contestant who isn’t here to make friends”.

The purple light could be installed in hospitals to continually sterilize surfaces and the air, and the researchers even figured out how to combine their HINS-light with LEDs to create a more normal-looking, less purple shade of light. Now we just need to make a portable version of this that comes with a black light to make hotel rooms livable (but still terrifying).  I mean, on the ceiling even? Come on.

[via Medgadget and PopSci]

Why, yes, we intentionally went out of our way to write the weirdest headline we could think of for this news story, but it’s 100% true. A bunch of Canadian scientists, specifically the guys up at the Nanorobotics Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, have figured out how to make certain bacteria do their bidding.

It works because the bacteria are “magnetotatic”, which means they swim in the direction of a magnetic field. So it’s fairly easy to manipulate them into moving around small blocks of epoxy and get them to build simple structures.

This may sound pretty goofy and pointless, but it’s not. This is actually a major step forward for nanotechnology. This is a proof of concept: we can actually do the stuff that heretofore was limited mostly to cyberpunk novels and hand-wringing by fundamentalists who barely grasp how robots work but can understand the term “gray goo”. Now it’s just a matter of making it effective. Check out the video under the jump and marvel at how kinda gross the future looks.

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