POST-PRESS: New Halomonadaceae Strain Grows With Arsenic

If arsenic can be toxic to humans, the new strain of Halomonadaceae strives, and indeed grew, with arsenic as food. And interestingly the more arsenic scientists put up with with them, the more they grew.

The GFAJ-1 strain of Halomonadaceae, a family of water-loving Gram-negative bacteria, has been isolated, and grown (cultured), from the sediments collected along the shore of Mono Lake, near Yosemite National Park, in eastern California. It thrives on arsenic or phosophorus.

What is doubly interesting here is that GFAJ-1 does not only consume arsenic, it directly incorporate the toxic element into their genetic material (DNA). "We know some microbes can 'breathe' arsenic. But what we've found is a microbe doing something new--building parts of itself out of arsenic," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, who headed the research team. (Read more.)

(photo by Wikimedia)

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