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unknownskywalker:

NASA Finds New Form of Life

NASA astrobiologists have discovered a microorganism in California that is doing something completely novel: substituting arsenic for phosphorus in its chemical makeup.

Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the six basic building blocks of all known forms of life on Earth. Phosphorus is part of the chemical backbone of DNA and RNA, the structures that carry genetic instructions for life, and is considered an essential element for all living cells. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.

It’s been known for a while that some microbes can metabolise arsenic, but what this organism is doing is building parts of itself out of arsenic, something no other known life forms can do. ”If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected,” asks Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow, “What else can life do that we haven’t seen yet?”

This will change the way astrobiologists look for life on other planets, including where they look (arsenic-rich atmospheres were previously considered off-limits) and what the definition of life really is (right now, we only know that life exists the way it does on Earth, so finding out that life can exist very differently and using different chemicals will expand what we think of when we think of “life”). This is the first alternative biology we’ve ever known to exist; previously, the idea of alternative biologies has been mere speculation, more common in the realms of pop-science and science fiction.

• Source: NASA. Photo via Gizmodo. More info at NASA astrobiology.

Reblogged from fuckyeahspace

unknownskywalker:

This lung-on-a-chip is the first lab-ready mini-organ to be used in drug research

This ersatz lung, no bigger than a multivitamin, could represent a new pharmaceutical testing method. On it, researchers have created an artificial alveolus, one of the sacs in the lungs where oxygen crosses a membrane to enter the body’s blood vessels. A polymer sheet that stands in for the membrane is in the blue strip. On one side of the sheet, blood-vessel cells mimic a capillary wall; on the other, lung-cancer cells mimic lung epithelial cells.

Scientists have tested the chip’s immune response, and it behaves just like real tissue would, a first step to having lifelike organ systems on which drugs can act. The chip’s primary developer, biomedical engineer Dongeun (Dan) Huh of Harvard University, hopes that within two years, the chip will succeed in mimicking the process by which the lungs swap oxygen for carbon dioxide. Huh would like to create a suite of artificial organs to be used in cosmetics testing and pharmaceutical safety trials.

Image: Scientists create a vacuum in the green channels bordering the blue rubber strip, which forces it to stretch, contract, and simulate breathing.

• Source: Popular Science

unknownskywalker:

Cyborgs Needed for Escape from Earth

As the growing global population continues to increase the burden on the Earth’s natural resources, some historians and scientists think humans should prepare to colonize space. The problem is, we may have to alter human biology significantly to achieve that goal.

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Scientists have warned for decades that humans are straining the Earth. The global population is increasing, economies are expanding and consumption doesn’t appear to be slowing.

While save-the-planet campaigns are asking people to save energy, conserve water, recycle and even go vegetarian, some scientists are thinking literally out of this world by suggesting that humans may eventually have to consider leaving Earth if they are to survive as a species.

If humans are to colonize other planets, it could well require the “next state of human evolution” to create a separate human presence where families will live and die on that planet. In other words, it wouldn’t really be Homo sapiens that would be living in the colonies, it could be cyborgs—a living organism with a mixture of organic and electromechanical parts—or in simpler terms, part human, part machine.

Altering man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space. Even though it may be both logically and technologically possible, the ethical question is whether it should be done.

Image: Artist’s rendition of a future base on Mars. A manned-Mars mission would take require astronauts being in space for more than a year. Currently, there isn’t enough research to know what long-term deep space travel would do to astronaut health.

Read the full article at astrobio.net