Following Glen, Roger, and James, and also wondering why Nick is being a pill....
I believe the report is of interest for showing an organism that uses arsenic in interesting ways, but it gets its magical-shininess (i.e. Science worthiness) for showing an organism that does not use phosphorous. We have never found a life form that could do the "life" thing without phosphorous. It is almost (almost) like finding an organism that uses silicon instead of carbon. Oh, and then there is the potential for practical application... like cleaning up arsenic, which is a common pollutant coming out of mines. But anything like that is a long way off. Eric On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 08:03 PM, Roger Critchlow <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >>On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 4:39 PM, glen e. p. ropella <<#>> wrote: > > > >[*] FWIW, I find it odd for you to ask, of this particular article, "why > >is this important?" Of all the obscure, mumbo-jumbo journal articles > >out there (our discussion of PoMo aside ;-), it seems blatantly obvious > >to me that the substitution of As for P in DNA is important, even if we > >don't know what the implications are. I am woefully ignorant of the > >literature, though. Is it fairly common to find and report substitutes > >for DNA components? >> >> >> > > > >>No, it's not common, it's never been reported before, all DNA and RNA in >life as we have known it up until today has been based on phospho-esters. >> > >>-- rec -- >> > > > ============================================================ >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
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