NASA - Discovery of a arsenic-based microbe on earth

[HaemishM]

Since I don't think it's been said yet, I welcome our new, arsenic-based overlords.

[WindupAtheist]

That meme quit being funny over 9000 years ago.

[Slayerik]

You mom quit being funny nine minutes ago.

[Pennilenko]

Your mom quit being funny nine minutes ago.

Fixed

[MahrinSkel]

You quit being funny nine minutes ago.

Fixed

Fixed.

Seriously, you don't have to be a major bio-chem geek to understand why this is awesome.  Arsenic is poisonous because it's close enough chemically to phosphorus to get sucked up by the same biochemistry, but doesn't quite work.  That this bug is using it interchangeably is huge.  Imagine a step further, a cellular chemistry that not only used them interchangeably, but used the the alternation of them to encode information.  Effectively you'd have added another layer of coding to the DNA.

If it can be this different, it can be almost unimaginably different.  Any complex chemical chain could potentially serve as the basis for "life".

--Dave

[DraconianOne]

If it can be this different, it can be almost unimaginably different.  Any complex chemical chain could potentially serve as the basis for "life".

...and have acid for blood! 

[Lantyssa]

Timothy Leary didn't qualify?

[Typhon]

There are complaints from other scientists that the experiment was sloppy.

Article is from Slate, but I had read another piece last week that sited a different biologist complaining about how sloppy the experiment was run.  It's getting to be a mantra on f13, but amazing claims require amazing evidence (yes, I realize that isn't the exact quote).

[K9]

It's written by Carl Zimmer and had been done pretty well. I have to agree that the initial suggestions aren't looking so well backed up now. I suspect more good things will come out of this in time, but this paper will now endure as one which was over hyped I suspect.