Felisa Wolfe-Simon(費莉薩·沃爾夫-西) 聲稱有一種微生物以砷為生

她的發現並非外星生命，但科學不再相同了




費莉薩·沃爾夫-西蒙 (Felisa Wolfe-Simon) 聲稱有一種微生物以砷為生，此說法在網路上引發了激烈爭論。多年後，她繼續進行關於生命邊界的新研究。






Her Discovery Wasn’t Alien Life, but Science Has Never Been the Same


The internet erupted in controversy over Felisa Wolfe-Simon’s claim of a microbe thriving on arsenic. Years later, she’s pursuing new research on the boundaries of life.




The creature came from the mud of Mono Lake, a body of water near Yosemite National Park that is nearly three times as salty as the Pacific Ocean. The lake has the pH level of glass cleaner and, most importantly for her team’s discovery, is full of toxic arsenic.

All known living things use six major chemical elements to keep their bodies churning. One is phosphorus. But from Mono Lake, Dr. Wolfe-Simon’s team said they had isolated an organism that could replace phosphorus with arsenic.

“I’d like to introduce to you today the bacterium GFAJ-1,” she proclaimed. A picture of magnified black and white cylinders appeared on the screen.

“We’ve cracked open the door to what’s possible for life elsewhere in the universe,” Dr. Wolfe-Simon said. “And that’s profound.”

“It sounds to me like you’re going to need to go out and find a new textbook to teach all those students about what elements are used to build life,” said another panelist, Mary Voytek, director of NASA’s astrobiology program, a funder of the discovery.



這種生物來自莫諾湖的淤泥，莫諾湖是約塞米蒂國家公園附近的一片水域，其鹽度幾乎是太平洋的三倍。該湖的pH值與玻璃清潔劑相當，而且對她的團隊的發現來說，最重要的是，該湖中充滿了有毒的砷。 所有已知的生物都使用六種主要化學元素來維持其身體的運作。一是磷。但沃爾夫-西蒙博士的研究團隊表示，他們從莫諾湖分離出了一種可以用砷取代磷的生物。 她宣布：“今天我想向你們介紹細菌 GFAJ-1。”螢幕上出現了一幅放大的黑白圓柱體的圖像。 沃爾夫-西蒙博士說：“我們打開了宇宙中其他地方可能存在生命的大門。” “這意義深遠。” 「在我看來，你需要出去找一本新的教科書來教那些學生了解哪些元素構成了生命，」