Tag: arsenic

Too much phosphorus

December 8, 2010 / / 0 Comments

It seems the big paper about the Arsenic which I’ve talked briefly on the previous post lacks a lot of precision and that the impurities presents in the medium will give room to the possibility that actually the bateria is not using arsenate, but still phosphate.

We were not really convinced at lunch discussion and then it seems we are not the only ones.

More info here. Especially interesting these criticisms . ).3 µM of Phospate is quite a lot in a P-/As+ medium.

I guess there is room to have another look at this bacteria.

The other way

December 3, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I’m still amazed by the subs of the Phosphorus with Arsenic as found out and report in Science here

So life can have a completely different way for working… It’s also true that the Arsenic sits just under the Phosphorus, so it share a lot of chemical property, but still is the first time we have an example of something living without Phosphorus. Some questions just right off the bat:

  • What’s going on with the Adenosin Three Phosphate (main energy molecule in all cells)?
  • Is that thing using an ATA (Adenosin Three Arsenate) ?
  • Is that stable/does it even exist?
  • Which are the pathways? All the kinase/phosphatase system is just working with ATA? I guess we need to change the phosphatase names if that is the case..
  • Which kind of evolution?
  • Where is on the phylogenetic tree?
  • Is it on the phylogenetic tree?

Time to read the paper.