How to Train Your Microbe
I am still not sure I understand it, but I have to say my favorite headline of the week was on the front page of The New York Times Friday: "Microbe Finds Arsenic Tasty; Redefines Life."
Now that is a grabber, and right below it an equally intriguing lead sentence that began, "Scientists said Thursday that they had trained a bacterium to eat and grow on a diet of arsenic."
I mean, who knew you could train germs?
It boggles the mind and fires the imagination. If you can train them to eat arsenic, can you also train them to sit and fetch and roll over?
And what kind of treats do you give them, if they learn a trick? Teeny little pieces of arsenic, I guess.
Actually, all of this is a remarkable scientific breakthrough. Scientists scraped bacterium from a dry lake bottom and gradually weaned the bacterium off phosphorus, one of the elements thought absolutely essential for growing things. Instead, they fed them arsenic.
Faced with eating arsenic or starving, the germs began eating the arsenic - and eventually thrived on it.
Scientists say this means there could be life on other planets where we used to think the elements needed for living things didn't exist. Apparently what we thought were the essentials aren't essential.
That seems to happen a lot with these scientific tests lately. One week a test shows you that this or that kills you, the next week a survey shows it doesn't.
Whatever, the amazing thing to me is that these little guys are trainable.
Who'd-a thought it?
