Felisa Wolfe-Simon

Who is Felisa Wolfe-Simon?

Felisa Wolfe-Simon is an American microbial geobiologist and biogeochemist. In 2010, Wolfe-Simon led a team that discovered GFAJ-1, an extremophile bacterium that they claimed was capable of substituting arsenic for a small percentage of its phosphorus to sustain its growth, thus advancing the remarkable possibility of non-RNA/DNA-based genetics. However, these conclusions were immediately debated and critiqued in correspondence to the original journal of publication, and have since come to be widely disbelieved. Reports refuting the most significant aspects of the original results have been published in the journal of the original research in 2012.