WASHINGTON — Two scientific papers appear to have disproved a controversial claim made by NASA-funded scientists in 2010 that a new form of bacterial life had been discovered that could thrive on arsenic.
“Contrary to an original report, the new research clearly shows that the bacterium, GFAJ-1, cannot substitute arsenic for phosphorus to survive,” said a statement by the US journal Science, a prestigious, peer-reviewed magazine.
Science published the much-hyped initial study in December 2010, with lead researcher Felisa Wolfe-Simon, then a fellow in NASA’s astrobiology program, announcing that a new form of life had been scooped from a California lake.
The bacterium in arsenic-rich Mono Lake was said to redefine the building blocks of life, surviving and growing by swapping phosphorus for arsenic in its DNA and cell membranes.
Biologists consider these six elements as necessary for life: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur.
Arsenic is similar to phosphorus but is typically poisonous to living organisms.
The original study needed to be confirmed in order to be considered a true discovery, and two separate teams found that indeed, the bacterium needed some phosphate to survive, and could not fully substitute arsenic to live.
