NASA discovers unique new life form

They did not DISCOVER it.

They created it. It's a theoretical test-tube baby. They replaced phosphorus with arsenic. It became arsenic.

They did not create it. They cultivated it. And then analyzed it.

Geomicrobiology of GFAJ-1. Mono Lake, located in eastern California is a hypersaline and alkaline water body with high dissolved arsenic concentrations (200 μM on average, 9). We used lake sediments as inocula into an aerobic defined artificial medium at pH 9.8 (10, 11) containing 10 mM glucose, vitamins, trace metals but no added PO4 3- nor any additional complex organic supplements (e.g. yeast extract, peptone) with a regimen of increasing AsO4 3- additions initially spanning the range 100 μM to 5 mM. These enrichments were taken through many decimaldilution transfers greatly reducing any potential carryover of measured traces of As by ICP-MS analysis of extracted nucleic acid and protein/metabolite fractions from +As/-P grown cells (11) (table S1). We then used high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) to positively identify As in extracted, gel purified genomic DNA (Fig. 2A). These data showed that DNA from +As/-P cells had elevated As and low P relative to DNA from the -As/+P cells. NanoSIMS analysis of the DNA showed that the As ratio on an atom per atom basis was significantly higher in the +As/-P versus -As/+P grown cells (Fig. 2A, 11¸table S2). Whether expressed as an ion ratio relative to C, (75As-:12C-, Fig. 2A) or 31P-:12C- (11) (table S2) or normalized by relative ion yield and expressed as a concentration in parts per billion (11) (table S2), we saw a similarly consistent trend, with significantly higher As in the +As/-P DNA, and higher P in the -As/+P DNA. In both cases, the non-amended element concentration was equal or less than background levels. These measurements therefore specifically demonstrated that the purified DNA extracted from +As/-P cells contained As. Our NanoSIMS analyses, combined with the evidence for intracellular arsenic by ICP-MS and our radiolabeled 73AsO4 3- experiments demonstrated that intracellular AsO4 3- was incorporated into key biomolecules, specifically DNA.

This discovery has potential. This discovery can lead to new analytical techniques in the field of molecular biology, gains for biotechnology, and has significant impact in the field of evolutionary genetics and biology. I think that bringing sci-fi concepts are going off track... but this discovery could be very important to the development of modern science.