Felisa wolfe simon biography of william

Here's a link to an article about my amazing students at Mills College. Into the deep. Learn how the deepest of the deepest sea teach us about habitability and life at the extremes.

Felisa wolfe simon biography of william

Old souls! Learn how these filamentous cyanobacteria live a lifestyle that has been around in the oceans for billions of years. What can their evolution and persistence tell us about life on Earth? In the field. Here, Dr. Wolfe-Simon is waiting for experiments to begin in the field. Note the bubbling hot spring. Scientists go to the most extreme environments on Earth to probe what habitability means.

Meteor crater. Imagine how this enormous rock lit up the sky and slammed into the Earth millions of years ago. The beach. These waters are mineral rich and With naturally high concentrations of arsenic, sulfur and selenium, you might assume this to be uninhabitable. Nature News. Archived from the original on Archived from the original on 24 December Retrieved 21 December Zimmer, Carl 7 December Retrieved 7 December Popular Science.

Retraction Watch. Retrieved National Science Foundation. External links [ edit ]. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Felisa Wolfe-Simon. Authority control databases. United States. This course emphasizes the scientific method helping students hone their critical thinking skills. Spring TR pm. ENVSA astrobiogeochemistry. Into the deep. Learn how the deepest of the deepest sea teach us about habitability and life at the extremes.

Meteor crater. Imagine how this enormous rock lit up the sky and slammed into the Earth millions of years ago. The beach. These waters are mineral rich and An example of hidden life-forms? We have no proof. As Oremland correctly notes, the paper was actually quite understated and conservatively written. Soon Wolfe-Simon began to crop up in stories that seemed more related to celebrity than science.

Meanwhile, the initial tide of astonishment quickly turned to skepticism, with academics claiming that the paper had overreached. He and other chemists objected that the arsenic linkages purportedly holding the DNA of GFAJ-1 together would quickly fall apart in water. Rosie Redfield, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia, led the criticism, with her blog, RRResearch, becoming a clearinghouse for challenges to the paper.

If this data was presented by Ph. Overwhelmed with questions from the media, Wolfe-Simon went underground. Discourse should occur in scientific publications. To try to engage in scientific commentary that way seems like a descent into madness. Today, glamour is the impression of attraction or fascination that a particularly luxurious or elegant appearance creates, an impression which is better than the reality.

The eight criticisms focused mostly on the possibility of contamination and on whether arsenate compounds would be stable enough to survive in the cells. Addressing the stability question, Wolfe-Simon cited two new papers by other researchers, each of which suggested that DNA with arsenic could indeed retain its phosphorus-based structure. To corroborate her results, Wolfe-Simon is collaborating with researchers who plan to subject the microbes to mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and genomic sequencing.

She says she has also been encouraging independent studies. Oremland has fulfilled about 10 of the more than 40 requests he has received for samples. They have their own agenda. I assume the things I see, other researchers will too. It is not alien or anything like that—again, nothing we ever say. Our paper shows compelling data that suggest that GFAJ-1 can use arsenic in a similar way to phosphate in its major biomolecules.

With astronomy, people seem to be comfortable looking at cartoons and not holding the scientists accountable for those purple planets. But in focusing on this one small feature of the press conference, Wolfe-Simon is casting culpability onto too narrow a target. Because NASA is dependent for funding on Congress, and therefore its constituents, it needs to project an ongoing sense of relevance.

But the agency also needs to maintain its scientific credibility. The controversy over GFAJ-1 demonstrates the risks inherent when a scientific institution assumes a media role. However, the statement was accurate. Brown, too, appears to be willfully ignoring some of the facts. Brown did not respond to several requests for comment from Popular Science.

Wolfe-Simon was at first reluctant to criticize the agency that writes her checks. But by July, her anger was beginning to show. As is usual, the reviewers requested more research before accepting the paper. In line with their request, Wolfe-Simon and her co-publishers used high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry to confirm that the isolated DNA contained arsenic.