TWS-Academia

I'm sure we have all heard of an Administration called NASA.

2) The Sky Lab Space Station :

which was the United States first Space Station. It was the only space station NASA sent alone and it did remain in orbit around the Earth from 1973 to 1979.

Along with many other discoveries and missions all for the better of Science.

Their headquarters are located in Washington D.C, USA. with a little less than 18, 000 employees with also an annual budget of almost 18 Billion US Dollars. ( FY 2009 )

NASA has always been under fire for its tremendous budget and weak results, Not from everyone, but at times from media, from civilians and from other administrations, especially in this bad economic period, however at the same time, a lot of humans are confident in this administration and do believe that all this will one day pay off and every one will be rewarded.

Through out all of its years, NASA has sent space stations and probes and satellites to almost every planet in our solar system, from Jupiter to Mars and so on.. in hopes in learning more about these large floating objects, which ever since their discovery have pricked our mind with thoughts and ideas..

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Now Let us get to the BREAKING NEWS! : )

In order for us to understand this, we would need to know a little about biology.

In Biology we know that the building blocks of life are : 

You can easily tell which of two is the Complex cell, it is obviously the bottom structure ( Eukaryotic Cell ). Now depending on whether an organism is made of what its complexity would differ, For instance : 

Us humans cannot be made from cells in the first diagram, to be honest its not that we cannot its just that we are not. We are made of complex cells and we are considered as a Multicellular organisms meaning we are made of more than ONE cell. :) ( Obviously )

Now if you look closely at both structures you would notice the word ( Nucleoid ) in the first diagram, and the word ( Nucleus ) in the second which is a large structure with a grey membrane consisting of a Nuclear membrane and Nucleolus and Chromatins While in the first diagram this structure is consisting of strands and threads of Chromatins ( This being the key difference on how Eukaryotic & Prokrayotic cells are classified - Based on the presence of a Distinct Nucleus). This structure controls all the cell activities and is basically the Brain of the cell if you may..

In both structures this Nucleus no matter how small or how distinct it is, it does control the cell and its functioning and structure.

It also contains structures that account for the genetics of the cell, how it is built up and how it is made.

These structures are made up of Nucleic Acid. Which make up the chromosomes which contain the genes and are a part of the Nucleus.

There are TWO TYPES of Nucleic Acid : 

DNA - Deoxyribonucleic Acid.

RNA - Ribonucleic Acid.

And This Nucleic Acid is Made up of further smaller individual units called Nucleotides.

As you notice the succession of the built up genetics of an organism. 

( Nucleotide - Poly nucleotide - Nucleic Acid  - Chromosome - Organism's Genetics )

Therefore you notice that the building block is the Nucleotide which is made of like we saw earlier :

Now if you look up at the beginning of this post to where I listed out the building blocks of life, you see all the above elements, along with Sulphur which are an important component for Proteins. There fore this is how we all know that all life is built and living organisms are made from all these elements.

Well... Until Now! 

NASA held a press conference recently, either today or tomorrow saying that they have made an amazing discovery.

They particularly said they have made ''an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial Life. "

The answer to that question is still unanswered, which was disappointing to some and expected to others, but the discovery that NASA made most recently is indeed an Huge Discovery in terms of Biology and in terms of the existence of Extraterrestrial life forms.

The discovery is this : 

Well, NASA has discovered a Living bacteria that is Living off ( Arsenic ) Rather than  

Get it.. ? 

THIS IS HUGE!

Felisa Wolfe-Simon (  A NASA Atsro-biology Researcher & Co-author if this Study ) Stated : 

Read this twice... ! 

To be more specific, The organism which they discovered is a Form of Bacteria..

Arsenic which is TOXIC to most living creatures, is what these bacteria use instead of phosphorous!

WHICH IS SOMETHING THAT NO OTHER KNOWN LIFE FORM CAN DO! 

This is of huge magnitude.

This Bacteria ( GFAJ - 1 ) is a rod shaped Extremophile Bacterium. The word Extremophile means an organism that requires extreme conditions in order to survive, conditions that would be very unconventional for most earthly organisms. This particular Bacteria when starved from phosphorous is able to incorporate the usually Toxic element Arsenic in it's Protiens, Lipids & metabolites such as ATP, As well as its DNA & RNA.

Scientific Classification :

- Kingdom :     Bacteria.
- Phylum :        Proteobacteria.
- Class :           Gammaproteobacteria.
- Order :          Oceanospirillales.
- Family:          Halomonadaceae.

It was discovered and cultured by Geomicrobiologist Felisa Wolfe - Simon at the US Geology Survey in Menlo Park, California. It was isolated & cultured from the beginning of 2009 from sediments that she and her colleagues collected from Mono Lake, California, USA. This lake is Hyper-saline and is Highly Alkaline, It also has one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic in the world. 


the rod-shaped GFAJ-1 nests among other salt-loving bacteria within the genus Halomonas of the family  Halomonadaceae. Many of these bacteria are known to be able to tolerate high levels of arsenic, and to have a proclivity to take it up into their cells. However, GFAJ-1 has now been shown to go a step further; when starved of phosphorus, it can instead incorporate arsenic into its metabolites and macromolecules and continue growing.