New research shows how bacterium in Mono Lake survive high arsenic concentrations

(Phys.org)—A team of Israeli, French and Swiss biologists have discovered how a strain of the bacterium Halomonas known as GFAJ-1, manages to survive in California's Mono Lake despite arsenic levels that would kill most other living things. As explained in their article, published in the journal Nature, this phenomenon is due to the differences in the ion bonding angle between proteins in the bacteria and arsenate as compared to phosphate, which results in weaker bonding with the arsenate and a preference for phosphate.

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