So I'm curious if these cells can survive if reintroduced back in to the wild?
"Next, what they did was culture the bacteria in the lab, and artificially jacked up the arsenic concentration, replacing all the phosphate (PO43-) with arsenate (AsO43-). The cells weren't happy, growing at a much slower rate on arsenate than phosphate, but they still lived and they still grew. These are tough critters."
That seems to indicate that they wouldn't be able to compete with their cousins outside of a controlled environment.
> That seems to indicate that they wouldn't be able to compete with
> their cousins outside of a controlled environment.
Not clear. They only grew more slowly when in a less friendly environment than they're used to. It's conceivable that the new environment selected for bacteria who can process AsO4 more quickly than the control strain, but it's not clear how well suited these new bacteria are to the original concentrations of AsO4 and PO4. Perhaps they'd do better, perhaps worse.
This group of descendant cells, having been selected by natural selection for the laboratory environment with high arsenic concentrations, might indeed fare poorly if put into Mono Lake with its different environment. Perhaps their descendants would be so few as to be undetectable.
"Next, what they did was culture the bacteria in the lab, and artificially jacked up the arsenic concentration, replacing all the phosphate (PO43-) with arsenate (AsO43-). The cells weren't happy, growing at a much slower rate on arsenate than phosphate, but they still lived and they still grew. These are tough critters."
That seems to indicate that they wouldn't be able to compete with their cousins outside of a controlled environment.