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Best "Arsenic and Odd Life" coverage

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2010/12/03 10:03 CST

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Since there were so many smart people paying attention to yesterday's much-anticipated news conference about organisms from Mono Lake that can use arsenic in place of phosphorus, I chose to focus my attention elsewhere. So last night I asked via Twitter for recommendations for articles that did the best job explaining the significance of the work, by people who actually read the relevant paper in Science: "A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus," by Felisa Wolfe-Simon et al. Here are the recommended articles; enjoy!

• From Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams: Arsenic and Odd Life;
• from Alla Katsnelson at Nature News: Arsenic-eating microbe may redefine chemistry of life;
• there are three of the Discover blogs with recommended entries, including: Carl Zimmer at The Loom: Of Arsenic and Aliens;
• Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy: NASA's real news: bacterium on Earth that lives off arsenic! ;
• and Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science: Mono Lake bacteria build their DNA using arsenic;
• and, to finish with a bit of levity, visit Randall Munroe's xkcd: Arsenic-Based Life