Web edition: May 27, 2011 It took no time in December for
critics to cast doubt on the remarkable claim that a bacterium
force-fed with arsenic incorporated some of the poison into its
cells and even its DNA. As soon as the Science paper by Felisa
Wolfe-Simon and colleagues was published, critics took to the
airwaves and the blogosphere; there was even coverage of the
coverage. The debate over whether an organism could substitute a
normally toxic substance, arsenic, for phosphorus, one of life’s
six elemental building blocks — and whether Wolfe-Simon and her
colleagues demonstrated an instance that substitution —
continues with a formal octet of criticisms published online
today in Science. And you can take a look for yourself at the
whole thing, because the journal has made the papers freely
available. Some of the objections are with the science done (or
not done) by the research team. The growth medium for example,
in which the microbes known as strain GFAJ-1 were cultured,
contained some phosphorous, one r