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For the First Time, Living Cells Have Formed Carbon-Silicon Bonds (sciencealert.com) 87

Posted by msmash from the science-learnings dept.
From a ScienceDaily alert: Scientists have managed to coax living cells into making carbon-silicon bonds, demonstrating for the first time that nature can incorporate silicon -- one of the most abundant elements on Earth -- into the building blocks of life. While chemists have achieved carbon-silicon bonds before -- they're found in everything from paints and semiconductors to computer and TV screens -- they've so far never been found in nature, and these new cells could help us understand more about the possibility of silicon-based life elsewhere in the Universe. After oxygen, silicon is the second most abundant element in Earth's crust, and yet it has nothing to do with biological life. Why silicon has never be incorporated into any kind of biochemistry on Earth has been a long-standing puzzle for scientists, because, in theory, it would have been just as easy for silicon-based lifeforms to have evolved on our planet as the carbon-based ones we know and love. Not only are carbon and silicon both extremely abundant in Earth's crust - they're also very similar in their chemical make-up.
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For the First Time, Living Cells Have Formed Carbon-Silicon Bonds More

For the First Time, Living Cells Have Formed Carbon-Silicon Bonds

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  • Did we learn nothing from Star Trek? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Don't fuck around with silicon based life. It's bad stuff.

  • Carbon vs Silicon (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Friday November 25, 2016 @01:48PM (#53360723) Homepage

    I'd guess that the main reason life is based on carbon rather than silicon is CO2 vs SiO2. It's a lot easier to breath in (plants) or out (animals) a gas (CO2) than a solid (SiO2). CO2 is also highly soluble in water, unlike (AFAIK) SiO2.

  • While silicon has four free valences like carbon, its reaction times are several magnitudes lower. Millions of years will pass until two silicon based lifeforms decide to mate, and till they bear children, the central star of their home planetary system burns out.
  • The important application for this is CYBORGS!!
  • "Not only are carbon and silicon both extremely abundant in Earth's crust - they're also very similar in their chemical make-up." -- What? They're completely different elements... their chemical composition is *100%* different.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dr. Evil ( 3501 )

      It's a ridiculous sentence, but it was a teaser to go into a discussion on valence electrons... the editors left the statement in like it was some kind of conclusion, rather than the beginning of the article.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      Well... they do both have 4 valence electrons in their outermost electron shell...

      But yeah, the similarity stops there.

      • Well... they do both have 4 valence electrons in their outermost electron shell...

        But yeah, the similarity stops there.

        When it comes to chemical reactions, that one similarity is by far the most important.

  • Plenty of organisms use silicon, diatoms first come to mind, but they use it mostly for protective shells. Silicon is good to make hard stuff, carbon is good for everything else. There's really no puzzle here.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not diatoms. What is called Diatomaceous Earth is a fossilized result. The original cell walls were chemically replaced by SiO2. The cell didn't use it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Drakker ( 89038 )

        They are not fossils, these organisms live today and they make a large part of phytoplakton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . They make their own shells called frustules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • Incorrect. Diatoms grow their own frustules, and the shapes of those vary greatly between species.

        To again post something from wikipedia because they phrase things so much better than I do:

        When diatoms die and their organic material decomposes, the frustules sink to the bottom of the aquatic environment. This remnant material is diatomite or "Diatomaceous earth", and is used commercially as filters, mineral fillers, mechanical insecticide, in insulation material, anti-caking agents, as a fine abrasive, and

    • Re:What about diatoms? (Score:5, Informative)

      by RockDoctor ( 15477 ) on Friday November 25, 2016 @03:19PM (#53361213) Journal
      Diatoms use silica - silicon dioxide - not silicon. That's a significant difference. The silicon atoms are never (TTBOMK, and I am a geologist, so a bit more familiar with the natural chemistry of silicon than most people) alone or simply solvated. The silicon is present and moves around as SiO4 tetrahedra with varying degrees and species of charge-balancing other anions and cations.

      Sorry, but it's a pet nark. I bet there is someone down-thread who makes some comment about silicone tits, and I'm going to get all mediaeval on him (it'll be a him).

      • Diatoms aren't the only life-forms that use silica; ordinary grass does it, too [nih.gov].
      • Well if you want to exclude silica because it's part of a molecule comprised of something in addition to just silicon, then you have to exclude organic molecules as well because they are composed of things other than just carbon. So I guess by your definition, life on earth doesn't use silicon or carbon.

        I'd suggest you rethink your stance there as your reasoning is a bit off.
        • The tendency of silica tetrahedra is strongly to polymerise with themselves and form minerals which have melting temperatures in the high hundreds of centigrade, are insulators, and which don't participate in reactions with more typical "organic" molecules (e.g. biopolymers, water, biological acids and alkalis). In short, their chemistry is very different to and incompatible with interactions with the large majority of "organic" materials. If people got that (not entirely unreasonable) inference from the or
    • I was going to bring that up as well. Oh well, I'll still put in the bits I copied from wikipedia.

      A unique feature of diatom cells is that they are enclosed within a cell wall made of silica (hydrated silicon dioxide) called a frustule.

      The frustule is composed almost purely of silica, made from silicic acid, and is coated with a layer of organic substance, which was referred to in the early literature on diatoms as pectin, a fiber most commonly found in cell walls of plants. This layer is actually composed

  • Silicoids are bastards (Score:5, Funny)

    by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Friday November 25, 2016 @02:05PM (#53360829)

    If I learnt anything from Master of Orion as a kid, it's that Silicoids are bastards. They have no compassion, and you might as well conquer them and then use them to colonise inhospitable planets.

  • Scientists have managed to coax living cells into making carbon-silicon bonds, demonstrating for the first time that nature can incorporate silicon -- one of the most abundant elements on Earth -- into the building blocks of life

    Silicon has long been known known to be an essential element for animals, and it is widely deposited by plants and animals (e.g., silica [wikipedia.org]). So, there must be plenty of silicon biochemistry.

    Why doesn't biology utilize it more? Probably because for most needs, other compounds work bet

  • I welcome our silicone based overlords created out of a lab experiment washed down the sink and raised in the sewer. We deserve such masters!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      silicone based overlords

      silicone

      I already have one of those. Pretty kinky too.

  • I wonder if this technology would be useful in some form to enable us to engineer implantable technology.

    • Maybe, but before that we engineer lifeforms that can eat up computer chips. Maybe we'll have to put computer chips into the fridge in the future, because they'd rot away otherwise...

    • Do you really want your electrical contacts to chemically interact with your environment? There is a good reason that cheap contacts use relatively inert brass plating, and more expensive contacts use very unreactive gold or platinum.

      Just in case you've never had to deal with the problems, no, you don't want this because the reactions result in changing contact resistance, electrochemical voltage either increasing or counteracting the voltages you're trying to sense. Yes, you can deal with these problems,

      • I was actually thinking engineered neurons that could be wired into our existing nervous system and interface with electronics for things like enhanced memory and other prosthetics.
        • Interfacing anything electronic with anything biological is going to involve combining conductors (things that let electrons move through them easily) with biological materials which are to a first approximation salty water with organic bits in it. That is a recipe for corrosion, contact resistance, and worst of all, dissolution of the metal cations into the organic salty water. Which opens up a host of subsequent problems which need to be dealt with.

          On a little more reflection, materials like graphene or

  • I welcome our new Horta overlords.

  • Damn it, Jim! I'm a doctor - not a bricklayer!

  • Just think... (Score:5, Funny)

    by sacrilicious ( 316896 ) <qbgfynfu.opt@recursor.net> on Friday November 25, 2016 @03:42PM (#53361295) Homepage

    Not only are carbon and silicon both extremely abundant in Earth's crust - they're also very similar in their chemical make-up.

    But for a cosmic flip of the coin, we could all be silicon-based beings, and our women could have carbon implants.

  • Snakegrass, horsetail (equisetum) has used silica for over a hundred million years. But I'm sure these guys knew that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Except Silicon Chemistry isn't like carbon (Score:5, Informative)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Friday November 25, 2016 @04:18PM (#53361445)
    Si02 isn't soluble in water.
    Silicon doesn't easily form chains. When we do coax it to form long chains it isn't stable.
    If we look into space we actually find clouds of alcohol a very water soluble carbon based molecule. We generally don't see many Silicon base water soluble molecules occurring naturally.
    The polarity of the bond in SiH4 is the opposite of CH4. The bond is also much weaker, weaker than even H-H bond thus very primitive organic processes would have a more difficult time building more complicated structures with Silicon.

    • Re:Except Silicon Chemistry isn't like carbon (Score:4, Informative)

      by YutakaFrog ( 1074731 ) on Friday November 25, 2016 @07:09PM (#53362219)
      Just to add a bit more in-depth analysis and information. I'm not a chemist, but I was trying to find once if the "Crystalline entity" was at all feasible in nature, and I found an absolutely fascinating article from Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com] Basically, the answer is no, silicon would have a very very hard time being the basis for life. For one thing, carbon (which is used for storing energy in carbohydrate chains) oxidizes to CO2 and water, and silicon oxidizes to a solid, which clogs up the system. For two, something about handedness that I didn't really understand. Maybe you'll make more sense of it than I could.

  • No (Score:2)

    by meglon ( 1001833 )

    Why silicon has never be incorporated into any kind of biochemistry on Earth has been a long-standing puzzle for scientists, because, in theory, it would have been just as easy for silicon-based lifeforms

    ... only for scientists who have never taken an organic chemistry class, and ones who don't understand the difference between an actual theory and pseudo-science bullshit. Then again, those are the dipshits who probably shouldn't be talking about the subject anyway.

  • Impossible vs Reality (Score:4)

    by meerling ( 1487879 ) on Saturday November 26, 2016 @03:25AM (#53364045)
    Just to point out a simple thing.

    When I was a kid, they said there's no life without photosynthesis either to make a cells food, or to be another creatures food.
    They said nothing could live in battery acid.
    They said nothing could live in the the vacuum of space.
    They said nothing could live in the high radiation of a nuclear reactor or space.
    They said nothing could live in the sub zero conditions in ice itself.
    They said nothing could live in the boiling waters of a geyser. (They hadn't found the oceanic hydrothermal vents yet.)
    They said blood couldn't be based on copper, it had to be iron.

    You know what? Since then every one of those things have been proven wrong. On Earth we have found life that violates those rules. Everything from Chemosynthesis to Extremophiles and Tardigrades, among some many weird and wonderful examples. Not all of these are newly discovered creatures or microscopic. Take the Horseshoe Crab and it's copper based blood as an example.

    You'd be amazed at what actually exists in nature. Even if you think you've created something unique in the way of life forms, odds are mother nature beat you to it, and you just haven't realized it yet.
  • "After oxygen, silicon is the second most abundant element in Earth's crust, and yet it has nothing to do with biological life. "

    Silicon has a LOT to do with biological life. Plants slurp the stuff up non-stop.

    https://www.google.com.au/sear... [google.com.au]

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