Life but not as we know it?

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Be interesting to find some biologists view of this.

I don't know if this is so much proof "life can exist anywhere" as much as "life can evolve to adapt anywhere". And there's a difference.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/44185...redefines-life

A strange, salty lake in California has yielded an equally strange bacterium that thrives on arsenic and redefines life as we know it, researchers say.

The bacteria do not merely eat arsenic - they incorporate the toxic element directly into their DNA, the researchers said today.

The finding shows just how little scientists know about the variety of life forms on Earth, and may greatly expand where they should be looking for life on other planets and moons, the NASA-funded team said.

"Life as we know it requires particular chemical elements and excludes others," Ariel Anbar of Arizona State University said in a statement.

"But are those the only options? How different could life be?"

The study, published in the journal Science, demonstrates that one of the most notorious poisons on Earth can also be the very stuff of life for some creatures.

[Rob McCow]

If life can adapt to many different kinds of environments, perhaps our goal in the Universe should be to export bacteria to as many worlds as possible. Perhaps extra-terrestrial bacteria where the source of life on this planet? Although the evidence would suggest that it was the combination of elements in the primordial soup, yet I don't know if scientists have been able to re-create this in any way.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I'm have the belief that if you have a habitable environment for life next to a hostile environment, life from the habitable environ will eventually evolve to survive in the hostile one. But a *lot* of life will die in the process.

But you kind of need that habitable oasis for an infinite supply of life to try and adapt and mutate.

If you just try and transplant life into a hostile environment it's virtually guaranteed it will all die out. It kind of needs a reservoir of life from a habitable zone to feed through.

I'm hoping Jon, Jason or Heather might be able to comment on this - I think they're our experts in the area!