Talk:GFAJ-1

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A news item involving GFAJ-1 was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 2 December 2010.

Wikipedia

/Archive 1

Clarify: Arsenic "based" vs arsenic capable

I was wondering if someone can clarify something. Terms like "Arsenic eating" and "capable of incorporating" can be interpreted two ways and so far I've not seen anything that makes the intended claim perfectly clear.

It could be the organism already had arsenic instead of phosphorus in it's DNA etc. while it was in the lake before she collected it, and increasing the arsenic concentrations in the lab just singled out these organisms,
or it could be that the organism used phosphorus in the wild, but as she removed the phosphorus and increased the arsenic in it's environment, the organism switched from using the one to the other.

I feel that this point is too subtle to trust second hand references. Does anyone know which the paper is claiming? --Yoda of Borg (talk) 00:27, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is in the introduction: "According to the authors, the microbe, when starved of phosphorus, is capable of incorporating the element arsenic in its proteins, lipids and metabolites such as ATP, as well as its DNA and RNA". Cheers, --BatteryIncluded (talk) 02:09, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, it's the second point that's correct, but note that there was only ever evidence of partial replacement of phosphorous with arsenic; it certainly didn't completely replace its phosphorous. As for "arsenic eating",

Facepalm. Bacteria do not eat. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 14:23, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the FAQ document, now they specify that it may be able to incorporate "a very small percentage" of arsenic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BatteryIncluded (talk • contribs) 15:09, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Electronic versus paper publication

(Comment moved to bottom by Squidonius)

Some "editor" believes that the fact that the arsenic bacteria article was never published in the print version of Science is not worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia articles. He appears unaware that this fact signifies that Science rapidly lost faith in the validity of the data. It is a significant component of an entry that an article published online has been withheld from print publication. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.210.44.60 (talk) 20:01, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I took the liberty to move the comment by IP user 128.210.44.60 down to the bottom here. To whom I urge to not re-add the edit, which CanadianLinuxUser rightfully removed twice as it was an incorrect and out-of-place edit by a IP user, and to refrain from editing solely articles related to GFAJ-1 (the ip appears to be of Purdue University so cannot be blocked but can be followed).

Regarding the issue: Science has published the article online and not on print (ePub ahead of print) and the article has not been retracted. ePub is common (see [1] for list of article awaiting paper publication), however this article is the second oldest awaiting paper publication (given the distribution, it is several deviations out). Nevertheless, Despite being obvious that something is wrong, there is written nowhere in Science or elsewhere why Science has not published it on paper yet, so the edit involves an unreferenced personal referenced. --Squidonius (talk) 21:13, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]