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On a variation of Halomonadaceae which might substitute arsenate for phosphate. Not alien. Maybe.
Article explains a possible discovery that will be announced tomorrow.
Comments
I can't find any recent papers by Wolfe-Simon that talk about this at all which is odd, I wouldn't want to do a press conference on something that isn't published. I did find this paper from another group that was funded by NASA and talks about bacteria oxidizing arsenite (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20511421). One point in the discussion of the paper is that the biofilms they test have bacteria that are missing an arsenite oxidase gene (aoxB) despite the fact they can verify that oxidation is occurring in the biofilms. This suggests a new mechanism but they don't suggest what other genes/proteins may be involved with it. I think the last line sums this all up pretty nicely, "They offer us a glimpse into the Earth's distant past of the potential influence of anoxygenic photosynthesis upon primordial arsenic cycling."
On the other hand, I do know that Mono Lake is a very unique site to study. It has a very high concentration of virus and bacteria for an aquatic environment despite being alkaline and hypersaline. I only know this because my old boss looked at the viruses found there and he found that they were morphologically different from other aquatic areas they've studied. So while the bacteria in Mono Lake are different so are the viruses that attack them. I guess what I'm saying is that if you were going to find something odd, this would be the place to find it. But I think these are more likely to be microscopic Coelacanths rather than alien bacteria and viruses.
Extraterrestrial is a much more specific word. But alien can refer to an extraterrestrial, a creature that lives near the bottom of the sea, a non-carbon based life form, or a Mexican. I think it needs some narrowing.
I wouldn't be completely dumbfounded if they turned up life that was to all appearances the product of an independent biogenesis. On the other hand, I agree that that article's not very good, and until I see the paper(s) in question I can't say whether there's a compelling case to think they have in fact found such life. The substitution of arsenic for phosphorus is very interesting and as far as I know unique, but unless there's a fundamentally different biochemistry at work here and not a simple swap - one that you can see is unusual but not unfeasible if you've taken a basic chemistry class and look at a Periodic Table - I don't think it stands alone as a reasonable case for "alien" life.
...oh wait.
But yeah, this NASA story as actually really boring. It's just bacteria that evolved to use As, it's really uninteresting if you aren't an evolutionary biologist. It's just a sensational title. Yeah, only interesting to the evolutionary biologists and another nail in the coffin of intelligent design.