Now I know why I like BLTs so much

From Abstruce Goose:Mmmmm…

This makes me even more motivated to throw the Darwin Day Dinner Party idea I’ve had in my head for a couple years. Everyone brings something they cooked, complete with a list of all the recipes, and you map out everything you ate on a giant tree of life, trying to cover as many orders of life as possible. Then you can look in awe at how millions of years of evolution (and a couple thousand of years of artificial selection) resulted in delicious food that’s now sitting in your belly.

That, and we can always use one more excuse to drink beer – have to represent the yeast!

Genetics will not be used to abort straights OR gays

Not because of ethics, necessarily, but because of science.

Genetics is complicated. This is a concept that all non-scientists, regardless of political leaning, seem to have a hard time grasping. I’ve heard liberals who are worried that advances in genomics will result in a simple prenatal test, which bigots would gobble up to make sure they’re not growing the next Ricky Martin or Ellen DeGeneres. This always seemed like a silly fear, since people from the religious right also tend to be not so fond of abortion.

But it’s not just the liberals. Now World Net Daily is worried gays are going to abort straight babies:

If two homosexual men want to use in vitro fertilization to conceive a baby and then use genetics technology to ensure the baby is also “gay,” while disposing of any “straight” embryos, would the law have any ethical problems with that? John A. Robertson of the University of Texas Law School is the chair of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and an advocate of what his book “Children of Choice” calls “procreative liberty.” In a paper for the Washington, D.C., think tank Brookings Institution, Robertson presents a futuristic scenario where advancing science and society’s evolving morality could create a once only dreamed-of ethical dilemma:

“Larry, a pediatrician, and David, a wills lawyer, meet in their late 20s, fall in love, and marry on June 15, 2025, in Indianapolis,” Robertson writes. “By 2030, they are well-enough established in their careers to think about having their own child. Larry’s 24-year-old sister Marge has agreed to donate her eggs, and David will provide the sperm, so that each partner will have a genetic connection with the child. … In the process, Larry and David come to realize that they would prefer to have a male child that shares their sexual orientation.” He continues, “The clinic doctors are experts in embryo screening and alteration, but cannot guarantee that the resulting embryos will in fact turn out to be homosexual. To increase the certainty, they will insert additional ‘gay gene’ sequences in the embryos.”

Of course gays, what with their agenda and all, are going to engineer some gaybies! So much more reasonable. Heterosexuals are doomed.

I don’t think you should chose an embryo based on sexual orientation, but let’s put ethics aside for a moment and talk about the science. The ethics debate is irrelevant because the “science” they discuss is ludicrous. As someone who’s studying the “mushrooming” field of genomics, let me try to explain.

Homosexuality almost certainly has a genetic component (1) and has potentially been associated with certain areas of the human genome (2). However, “genetic component” does not equal “gene.” Genetics is way more complicated than what you learned back in middle school – it’s not just single genes with dominant and recessive alleles. You can have multiple genes affecting the same trait, numerous alleles per gene, and interactions between certain combinations of certain alleles between different genes.

If you do find a single mutation that’s associated with homosexuality, it’s likely to be very very rare in humans. If it was more common, we would have identified it a long time ago using traditional genetic tools. Such a mutation would be able to explain just a small percentage of homosexuality. I’m sure by now you’ve heard of studies in the news that have claimed to find a genetic component to heart disease, or schizophrenia, or something. If you read the fine print, it usually only explains something like 3% of the disease. Not really predictive enough to start aborting the breeders.

If this sounds complicated already, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can also have mutations in regulatory regions of genes. These aren’t DNA sequences that code for the actual protein, but rather regulate things like how often or in what tissue that protein is made. You can also have copy number variants (CNVs), where some people have extra (or less) copies of a certain gene.

Thanks to massive advances in technology, we can study stuff like mutations, regulatory regions, and CNVs pretty well now… but they’re still not the full story. Often times a single “hit” – one mutation in a gene, or one big deletion in a chromosome – isn’t enough to actually cause a trait. This is especially true when dealing with neurological traits like autism or learning disabilities, and may be implicated in a behavioral trait like homosexuality. Often times you need multiple mutations or deletions – or a combination of both – until you actually show the trait in question.

But it’s still even more complicated than that. It’s not as easy as saying Mutation A + Deletion 2 = FABULOUS! Both of these events are extremely rare, and there are likely thousands and thousands of different combinations of “lesions” (messed up DNA) that could cause a trait. So even if you sequenced a baby’s full genome, you’d have no idea what all the de novo (new) mutations and deletions would do, because they’ve likely never been seen in that combination before.

And all of this isn’t even taking into account epigenetics (which can further regulate DNA, and can even differ between twins), and environmental factors (which can range from hormones you’re exposed to in the womb, to listening to too many show tunes as a small child).

So the odds of Teh Gay being boiled down to a simple test, or a simple gene you can use to infect the population? Basically zero.

Genetics is complicated, and I don’t expect everyone to be able to understand it in depth. Even as a first year PhD student, I tried my best to write the above paragraphs jargon free and without unnecessary detail. But at the very least, admit that it’s complicated and you have no real idea how it works instead of concocting conspiracy theories.

Though I have to admit, it’s amusing that these are the same type of people who claim that simply knowing gays exist, or worse, allowing them to be parents is enough to turn someone gay. Which is it, nature or nurture? Oh right, whatever currently fuels your paranoid hate speech the most.

But you know, maybe the totally wacked out religious types would be content aborting fetuses if they even had a 5% higher chance of being gay. In which case, I’d like to point them to a study that showed each older brother a man has increases his probability of being homosexual by 28% to 48% (3). If they really want to avoid bringing gay men into the world, stop giving birth to sons. And if you’re not willing to rely on abortion, only have one child.

A win-win situation, if I do say so myself.

1. Bailey JM and Pillard RC (1991). A genetic study of male sexual orientation. Archives of General Psychiatry, 48:1089-1096.
2. Mustanski BS, et al. (2005) A genomewide scan of male sexual orientation. Human Genetics, 116(4):272-8.
3. Blanchard R (1997) Birth order and sibling sex ratio in homosexual versus heterosexual males and females. Annual Review of Sexual Research, 8:27-67.

More quotes from the lab

There’s another first year graduate student rotating in the same lab that I’m rotating in, though he’s working on a different project from me. How do our projects differ, you ask?

1st Year: *talking to another labmate about something completely off topic*
Post doc: Hey, that’s five minutes you just wasted that could have gone toward curing autism!
Me: That’s why I’m not studying autism.
Post doc: *laughs* So you can waste as much time as you like?
Me: Yep. Evolution’s not going anywhere!

Joking aside, I actually have been getting a lot of work done. For the fellow biologists: I run my first microarray on Tuesday! For the non-biologists: I get to do cool nerdy stuff I haven’t done before!

This is why I don’t consider myself a science blogger. Too lazy.

Sometimes I wonder if there's any hope for skepticism

My friend Mark sent me to an excellent article over at National Geographic that explains all of the recent mass bird deaths people have been freaking out about. Is it the Apocalypse? Do we need to call Kirk Cameron?! Was 2012 a typo and the Mayans meant 2011?!?!

Nope. Turns out it’s normal, and the media decided to hype it up:

But the in-air bird deaths aren’t due to some apocalyptic plague or insidious experiment—they happen all the time, scientists say. The recent buzz, it seems, was mainly hatched by media hype.

At any given time there are “at least ten billion birds in North America … and there could be as much as 20 billion—and almost half die each year due to natural causes,” said ornithologist Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society in Washington, D.C.

But what causes dead birds to fall from the sky en masse? The Arkansas case points to two common culprits: loud noises and crashes.

What follows is a more in depth explanation that I, as a biologist, found interesting. I was content knowing skepticism had prevailed once again… until I made the mistake of reading the comments. Emphasis mine:

?Now that the evil media brought falling dead birds to our attention I ask why hasn’t NG ever done a documentary on this ‘common’ occurrence that apparently the general population knows nothing about? It is strange that so many of us have not witnessed birds dropping from the sky at a fireworks show. World firework competitions are held every year in my area and not one bird has died from blunt force trauma. I know wind turbines are deadly for birds and bats and solutions are being examined. I remember a robin hitting the window one day… it was stunned and it took awhile, but he eventually flew away… obviously a lucky one.

“Alfred Hitchcock knew a thing or two! Birds don’t fall from the sky! We’ve been setting off fireworks for 235 years and this has NEVER happened!!! Wake up America! This is just another government compromise for terror! Are we going to wait until PEOPLE start dropping dead in the streets? Get A grip”

“What else did she say that ya’ll aren’t printing? What’s up with this story? “Birds just die all the time, no big!!” Well, they don’t fall from the sky all the time. And our global environment isn’t poisoned all the time like it was with this gulf spill made worse by corexit. Then you’ve got cell masts and communications technology that has been shown to cross the blood-brain barrier and dead birds and health problems surrounding cell masts.
What’s the deal here, National Geo? I subscribe and love your articles and photos.. You’re one of the best. But printing garbage like this really makes me lose faith. I thought, Oh good! National Geographic did a story on this. Then I read it and felt very frustrated.
Birds do not fall en masse out of the sky all the time. It does not happen. Does Mr. Whatsit from the Audobahn society think we’re all stupid?
Do you?”

Yes, yes I do.

I was about to lament that there was no hope, but as I was writing this post, this comment appeared:

almost all of theses skeptical comments are more irrational than unexplained mass animal death. Little creatures are most susceptible to minute events. Your anecdotal evidence that “i’ve never heard of this” or “this has never happened” has zero weight in the real world of animal life. You ignore basic facts of animal life that has happened since thousands of years before your ignorance was formed and insist there must be something sinister happening.

your tinfoil hats reflecting sunlight probably kill more birds through disorientation than any of your made up fantasies.

One out of 25 people being sane is good, right? …Right?

Sometimes I wonder if there’s any hope for skepticism

My friend Mark sent me to an excellent article over at National Geographic that explains all of the recent mass bird deaths people have been freaking out about. Is it the Apocalypse? Do we need to call Kirk Cameron?! Was 2012 a typo and the Mayans meant 2011?!?!

Nope. Turns out it’s normal, and the media decided to hype it up:

But the in-air bird deaths aren’t due to some apocalyptic plague or insidious experiment—they happen all the time, scientists say. The recent buzz, it seems, was mainly hatched by media hype.

At any given time there are “at least ten billion birds in North America … and there could be as much as 20 billion—and almost half die each year due to natural causes,” said ornithologist Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society in Washington, D.C.

But what causes dead birds to fall from the sky en masse? The Arkansas case points to two common culprits: loud noises and crashes.

What follows is a more in depth explanation that I, as a biologist, found interesting. I was content knowing skepticism had prevailed once again… until I made the mistake of reading the comments. Emphasis mine:

?Now that the evil media brought falling dead birds to our attention I ask why hasn’t NG ever done a documentary on this ‘common’ occurrence that apparently the general population knows nothing about? It is strange that so many of us have not witnessed birds dropping from the sky at a fireworks show. World firework competitions are held every year in my area and not one bird has died from blunt force trauma. I know wind turbines are deadly for birds and bats and solutions are being examined. I remember a robin hitting the window one day… it was stunned and it took awhile, but he eventually flew away… obviously a lucky one.

“Alfred Hitchcock knew a thing or two! Birds don’t fall from the sky! We’ve been setting off fireworks for 235 years and this has NEVER happened!!! Wake up America! This is just another government compromise for terror! Are we going to wait until PEOPLE start dropping dead in the streets? Get A grip”

“What else did she say that ya’ll aren’t printing? What’s up with this story? “Birds just die all the time, no big!!” Well, they don’t fall from the sky all the time. And our global environment isn’t poisoned all the time like it was with this gulf spill made worse by corexit. Then you’ve got cell masts and communications technology that has been shown to cross the blood-brain barrier and dead birds and health problems surrounding cell masts.
What’s the deal here, National Geo? I subscribe and love your articles and photos.. You’re one of the best. But printing garbage like this really makes me lose faith. I thought, Oh good! National Geographic did a story on this. Then I read it and felt very frustrated.
Birds do not fall en masse out of the sky all the time. It does not happen. Does Mr. Whatsit from the Audobahn society think we’re all stupid?
Do you?”

Yes, yes I do.

I was about to lament that there was no hope, but as I was writing this post, this comment appeared:

almost all of theses skeptical comments are more irrational than unexplained mass animal death. Little creatures are most susceptible to minute events. Your anecdotal evidence that “i’ve never heard of this” or “this has never happened” has zero weight in the real world of animal life. You ignore basic facts of animal life that has happened since thousands of years before your ignorance was formed and insist there must be something sinister happening.

your tinfoil hats reflecting sunlight probably kill more birds through disorientation than any of your made up fantasies.

One out of 25 people being sane is good, right? …Right?

Grad school is hard

Obvious statement of the day, I know.

But grad school is also pretty cool. The new quarter has started, and here are my classes:

Advanced Genetic Analysis (first half) – basically how to set up experiments using a bazillion different genetic tricks in order to investigate, well, anything. You know how cool it was solving Punnett square problems? Yeah, it’s like that on steroids. …What do you mean Punnett squares aren’t cool?

Molecular Population Genetics and Evolution (second half)- I can’t wait for this class. Should rename it “Jen has a giant nerdgasm every Tuesday and Thursday.”

Introduction to Statistical and Computational Genomics – I know the title sounds scary, but this will likely be my easiest class. Half of the time is learning how to program in Python, which I pretty much already know. Probably won’t learn anything new until the last couple weeks, where we talk about classes. But the other half of the class is a lecture on bioinformatics, which I basically know nothing about, so that’ll be useful.

My lab rotation still is about human population genetics and evolution, but this time instead of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) I’m looking at copy number variants (CNVs). …If I was a good science blogger I would take the time to explain what those are, but I have to run to class. Sorry, you’re stuck with Wikipedia for now!

Is God disappearing from literature?

Google Books has scanned over 15 million books so far, and a team at Harvard University has been crunching the numbers. They’re looking for various trends that can highlight the evolution of language, and their results are fascinating. Ed Yong has a wonderful review that you should check out, with everything from grammar to Nazis (but no Grammar Nazis).

But I wanted to point out one trend they’ve been seeing in the books over the years:
In the lead researcher’s own words, “‘God’ is not dead; but needs a new publicist.”

And just because I’m a biologist who wants to rub it in…
Woooo! But more than just bragging about it’s growing popularity compared to God*, this graph is still pretty awesome. Not only does it show approximately when these discoveries were made, but look at evolution in the 1940s. Looks like people were a little scared to be talking about it, maybe thanks to Nazis? That would be fascinating to look into more.

This is only the first report from the project, and I can’t wait for the rest to come out! Mmmmm, data and literary nerdiness combined!

*Remember, it’s comparatively. Look at the magnitudes on the y axes. The atheist horde still has some work to do. But at least science is on the upswing, while God isn’t looking too hot if this trend continues!

Feminists' selective science phobia

Evolutionary psychology gets a lot of flack from both inside and outside science. And to be honest, a lot of it is well deserved criticism – too much of evolutionary psychology is arm chair philosophizing and overly optimistic adaptationism, rather than hard data.

But I still assert that’s no reason to write off the field as a whole. For one, there are plenty of good studies out there, and it’s often the media that warps results into broad conclusions, not the scientists themselves. Two, it’s a baby field that’s still learning quality control – give it another ten years to refine its standards and come up with improved ways to make measurements, such as advanced brain activity imaging technology. And three, it is completely unreasonable to insist that the brain is magically not under selective pressure like every other thing in nature.

Unless it doesn’t mesh with your philosophy, of course.

Sometimes I hate calling myself a feminist because of who it associates me with. For example, this latest example of feminist sciencephobia from Jill at I Blame The Patriarchy:

Evolutionary psychology rests on the shaky (often enpornulated) hypothesis that modern human social behaviors are actually species-preserving adaptations.

No, it rests on the very strong hypothesis that the brain evolves like any other organ.

Because evolutionary psychology, like all psuedoscience, is administered by jackasses who are heavily invested in patriarchy, the behaviors in question just happen to be the very same behaviors commonly observed to be beloved of patriarchyists. And also of sexists, misogynists, horndogs, militarists, straight people, politicians, consumers of pornography, consumers of “beauty,” racists, godbags, liberal men, Hollywoodists, homophobes, matrimonialists, and other cogs in the megatheocorporatocratic machine. Everybody who loves the current world order loves the romantic myth that it is the result of the random interaction of mindless genes, or biological “design.” Sadly, the world order is actually the result of something way more sinister: the completely arbitrary social construct of the culture of domination and submission.

I should have stopped reading here, but I was impressed. I didn’t think someone could fit so many straw men and ad hominems in a single paragraph! But I know Jill thinks this is her “snarky” “style,” so I kept reading to see her views on the science.

Annie Murphy Paul uses revelations facilitated by evolutionary psychology to make the (tired old) case that women are pretty much prisoners of biology, or, more specifically, of the menstrual cycle. Her apparent thesis: ovulating women are constrained by biological impulse to go to bars, wear tight dresses, and emit musical, magical laughter, whereupon they become attracted to male lantern-jawed superheroes. Non-ovulating women, on the other hand, are practically a different species. They are drab and dull and fail to effervesce or mate, and prefer pansy-ass dudes.

As an evolutionary biologist, I’ve yet to hear an evolutionary biologist who claims people are prisoners of biology. We are, however, not immune to our biology. It’s not insane to suggest that some of our behavior is innate – humans just have the special ability to consciously choose to overcome some of it. That may be difficult for behaviors that are really ingrained in us for evolutionary reasons.

For example, we’ve evolved to crave sugary food because thousands of years ago, that craving would have kept us alive. It’s subconscious – we don’t think, “Gee, I really want that cookie because I may not be able to eat for another week.” It explains why people are inclined to eat too much sugary food now that it’s abundant, but it by no means says we are prisoners to that behavior and that we must eat sugary food until we’re diabetic.

Many feminists would have no problem with that example, but they still proceed to freak out when the same thought process is applied to behavior between the sexes. Even if we did find some difference between the sexes, that doesn’t mean there’s a value difference between those behaviors, nor does it mean we even have to do them.

But no. Jill and feminists like her are just content imagining a world where Big Bad Male Scientists are out to get them:

Paul cites research conducted, unfortunately, by psychologists and “dating advisers,” since who else would know from this shit? One researcher dude juxtaposed menstrual cycle data with the nightly revenues of (a whopping) 18 lap dancers. Awesome.

Research dude: Hmm. I wonder where we could conduct some research on ovulating women?

Grad student dude: How about a strip club? We can totally multitask by working and abusing the sex class at the same time.

Research dude: It’s pure genius! I’ll take full credit.

In this case research dude concluded that not only do strip club clientele discern whether lap dancers are ovulating, but that pervs lavish more cash on ovulating lap dancers than they do on dull old non-ovulating ones. Paul calls this “one of the most arresting studies of male responses to female fertility cues.”

She goes on to miss the point so badly that I’m inclined to believe she’s misrepresenting Geoffrey Miller’s study on purpose to fulfill her paranoid fantasies. As someone who’s actually read the paper in question, allow me to correct Jill (or you know, you could be a good scientist and go read it yourself.):

Female fertility cues! Apparently women who work in strip clubs are not, contrary to what spinster aunts have maintained through the ages, just trying to make the best of their fucked-up sex class status by working themselves through law school or a drug habit or a musician boyfriend. These hotsy-totsy babes are in fact sending their slavering clients “female fertility cues.”

Jill tries to spin it so it seems like the study is saying women become strippers just to send “female fertility clues.” The study says no such thing about the motivation for becoming a stripper: It looks at women who already are strippers, and sees if there’s any differences in the tips they get depending on where they are during their menstrual cycle. They found that men are more likely to tip when women are ovulating. They don’t have a mechanism for the interaction, but speculate on what sort of cues could clue men in. Do the women behave differently? Is there some sort of physical difference men subconsciously notice? Is is a pheromone or other sort of chemical signal? They don’t make any conclusions.

Furthermore, strippers who take birth control pills are “’shooting [themselves] in the foot,’ since [they’ll] miss out on the bountiful tips garnered by women in estrus.” That’s right. Sexploitation isn’t about male domination, it’s about human reproduction. Human reproduction is natural. Natural is good. Therefore sexploitation is good.

They are shooting themselves in the foot in terms of making tips. Since they don’t ovulate, they don’t receive the boost in tips. The researchers by no means imply that making tips is obviously the most important thing and birth control isn’t important. Seriously
, where the fuck does she ev
en get the rest of that paragraph other than from an overactive imagination?

She goes on and on about how women can’t possibly have any sort of innate behaviors, or as she calls it, a “primal urge to exude pornulated dudefantasy.” Really, and we’re supposed to take you seriously?

I about lost it when I hit the most glaring Biology Fail of the piece:

But isn’t this just a reiteration of the hysterical women stereotype? Not at all, says one of the kindly dude researchers.

“The traditional and rather patronizing male view was that women are fickle, that their preferences are random and arbitrary. Now it turns out that what looks like fickleness is actually deeply adaptive and is shared with the females of most animal species.”

OK, let’s get this out of the way first: does Dude even realize that ‘most animal species’ are either arthropods or nematodes, depending on which geek you’re talking to? Together they number in the millions. Here at Spinster HQ we were unable to locate any research on, for example, the fickleness of female flatworms. Maybe they like to sport around in spandex when it’s that time of the month, but published studies omit to mention it. So this guy, in his attempt to science-ize an enormously detrimental sexist stereotype, grossly mischaracterizes the scope of the planet’s animalian diversity to further his own anthrocentric worldview.

And also, do not speak to me, dude, of “the rather patronizing male view.” How fucking patronizing is it to argue that ‘fickleness’ is a fucking adaptation shared by all females everywhere? That women’s behavior is, in fact, irrational, only now this irrationality has scientifically proven reasons? This dude is killin’ me!

Spinster HQ didn’t look very hard, nor did they read very closely. The “fickleness” this “dude researcher” is talking isn’t about irrationality, it’s about is Bateman’s principle, which is “the theory that females almost always invest more energy into producing offspring than males invest, and therefore in most species females are a limiting resource over which the other sex will compete.” It’s called that because this “dude researcher” named Bateman first found this trend in fruit flies. You know, arthropods. It’s been found across a wide range of taxa.

Also note how it says “almost.” There are plenty of counter examples of males being the choosy sex. And while there’s evidence going both ways in humans, the point is it doesn’t matter. If science did prove, without a doubt, that female humans invested more energy into reproduction and that caused them to evolve with a specialized set of behaviors, it doesn’t mean we are slaves to that behavior or that it justifies our actions, or the actions of others around us.

The cherry on top of the post was Jill’s bullet point that claims evolutionary psychology cannot explain homosexuality. Even though there are multiple competing hypotheses about the persistence of homosexual behavior. Even if you’re not familiar with evolutionary psychology, that was the second Google result. Way to do your research.

The a priori assumption that evolutionary psychologists are all evil dudes with an agenda to instill 50s era gender roles is frankly paranoid. Ironically, Jill wrote a great post about how feminists need to trust science more. Too bad she’s a hypocrite – this isn’t the first time I’ve called her out on it. “Supporting science” is not the same as “Supporting science only when it doesn’t make you uncomfortable about your world views.”

And you know what? Feminists get the “man hater” stereotype exactly because of posts like that*. I’m a feminist because I’m pro social equality for both sexes. Dismissing researchers because they’re male isn’t equality.

*I should clarify because of a comment below. Feminists will carry that stereotype no matter how rational our arguments are or polite we act just because feminism pisses a lot of people off, and they react harshly out of privilege. But there are too many people who basically are feminists except they still believe that stereotype, because there’s one rotten apple that’s particularly stinky and ruins the label.

And the media sensationalizes science again

I came home to a flurry of emails, tweets, and blog posts about NASA’s big announcement. I was momentarily floored when I saw headlines like this:

“NASA Finds New Life” – Gizmodo

“NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical” – The Richard Dawkins Foundation

“Bacteria first species observed to use arsenic-laced DNA backbone” – Ars Technica

Though upon actually reading about the discovery, the most accurate title came from Boing Boing: Weird life form on Earth – kind of, maybe.

Look, it’s an exciting discovery, but everyone is over-hyping it. This bacteria is not an arsenic-based life form in the sense that we are carbon-based life forms. It does not use arsenic as a source of fuel. It does not exclusively build its DNA backbone using arsenic. It doesn’t even really like to do that at all in the wild – it incorporates arsenic under laboratory conditions that force even higher concentrations of arsenic upon it. It is not a different type of life that arose separately from phosphate-using lifeforms.

What it is is an excellent example of evolution. While coming from a phosphate-using ancestor, this bacteria has somehow adapted to an extreme environment that would kill most other organisms. I’m more interested in how it avoids death by this toxin than the fact that it incorporates a molecule extremely similar to phosphate into its DNA. PZ has a more thorough scientific breakdown over at Pharyngula.

Way to go, shoddy science reporting. Creationists are probably wetting themselves over this “new life form,” ready to tell biologists how it could have only been designed. I mean, just look at how this redditor is reacting to your sensationalism:

Is it ok that I’m already discriminating against arsenic based life forms because they are fundamentally different than me? Bunch of arses, they are.

Sigh. Well, at least I don’t have a whole new DNA structure to memorize. Getting a PhD in Genomics was already hard enough.