[meteorite-list] Strangest link between life on earth and mars yet!

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 18:15:58 -0600
Message-ID: <009d01c73383$56c8efd0$b421e146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi,

    The whole question of the reality of nanobacteria has been
with us for sometime now. The concept of some form of
microbial (?) life many times smaller than the smallest bacteria
originates with a Texas geologist (Folk), who found fossil
traces in Italian carbonates.
    The smallest known bacteria are as large as the largest
viruses. Pox viruses, which cause diseases such as smallpox,
can be 300 nanometers across their longest axis. There are
bacteria as small as 200 nm. Viruses can get much smaller,
however; the picornaviruses, a group that includes polio and
hepatitis A, can be as small as 24 to 35 nm.
    The proposed nanobacteria are about 100 nanometers
across, which would mean they would have perhaps one
eighth of the volume of the smallest known bacteria, which
is impossibly small for a form of life, say microbiologists.
    Of course, you should bear in mind that, just as paleontologists
don't like physicists and astronomers proposing asteroids as
dinosaur killers, biologists don't like geologists proposing any
new life forms that the biologists may have missed.
    In 1998 the debate got real when Olavi Kajander and Neva
Ciftcioglu of the University of Kuopio in Finland claimed to
have found nanobacteria, surrounded by a calcium-rich
mineral called apatite, in human kidney stones. Medically,
the cause of kidney stones has been an unsolved mystery
for a century.
    Objections were quick in coming. Many of the supposed
nanobacteria were less than 100 nm across, smaller than many
viruses, which cannot replicate independently. Microbiologically,
to contain the DNA and proteins needed to function, a cell must
be at least 140 nm across. If these are bacteria, they are miracles
of packaging.
    "These particles are self replicating, that is without doubt,"
[University of British Columbia microbiologist Yossef] Av Gay
says. But finding out what is inside them is complicated... "The
story seems to be gearing toward the idea that these are not
bacteria, but maybe a new living form. It is a very interesting
story, but you won't get the answer now."
    "Nanobacteria," or whatever form of life they are, have now
been found in kidney stones, deep ocean sediments, a mile deep
in solid rock, in human arterial plaque, gallstones, mine sludge,
psammona bodies (calcified structures in ovarian cancer), and
of course, first and foremost, they, or rather their traces, are
the "evidence of life" in the famous Alan Hills Martian meteorite.
    It is the claim of "nanobacteria" that chiefly fuels opposition
to the meteorite discovery claim, as a great many biologists
are virulently opposed to the notion of "nanobacteria." There is
no dount in my mind that the acceptance of that claim will wait
until the notion of such small life is accepted (and understood).
    Don't hold your breath. Many decades ago an Australian
pathologist discovered that a bacteria (H. pylori) was the cause
of stomach ulcers, a disorder thought by medical science to
be without an infectious cause. It took nearly two decades
and hundreds of positive trials to convince the over-grown
and slow-moving consensus of science. Yet, today, after twenty
more years since it was ccepted as the cause of ulcers, if you
go to a doctor with your ulcer, he will likely NOT treat you
for your H. pylori infection -- forty years after the discovery.
And that was just the discovery of a perfectly ordinary bacteria.
Maybe in another 40 years...
    Interestingly, there are currently TWO biological mysteries
that revolve around the question of very small "agents." There's
the whole "nanobacteria" question and there is the question
of the particulate agents of the dozen or so known spongiform
encephalopathies, something about 1/3 the size of a large virus;
in other words, about the same size as small "nanobacteria."
    The currently popular theory is that the agent is an abnormally
folded protein called a prion. However, despite the prion theory
winning its advocate the Nobel Price more than a decade ago, it
has never achieved a demonstrated proof (in vitrio or in vivo).
Very embarassing. And, after a decade, the prion theory has
generated no advances of any kind. (Even Einstein had to wait
15 years to get his Nobel for relativity, from 1905 until 1919,
when there was finally an experimental proof.)
    The answers, whatever they are, will probably take decades
to turn up.


Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mayo Clinic finds DNA in nanobacteria, 2004:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3729487.stm

"Nanobacteria" discovered in mine sludge; too small to be seen
under a microscope, they are found by their DNA: December, 2006:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20061121184849data_trunc_sys.shtml
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------


----- Original Message -----
From: "doctor death" <neocondeatheaters at hotmail.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 7:03 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Strangest link between life on earth and mars yet!


> http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2006/1817115.htm
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Fixing up the home? Live Search can help
> http://imagine-windowslive.com/search/kits/default.aspx?kit=improve&locale=en-US&source=hmemailtaglinenov06&FORM=WLMTAG
>
> ______________________________________________
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>
Received on Mon 08 Jan 2007 07:15:58 PM PST