NASA Finds Arsenic-Eating Microbes, Changes View On Life As We Know It
Pushing life to extremes, researchers reported Thursday that they have discovered microbes able to subsist almost entirely on arsenic, which “very likely” incorporate it into their DNA. The finding may be the first exception to the formula long thought to govern the basic chemistry of life.
Force-grown in the laboratory, these bacteria use the notorious poison to replace molecules of the element phosphorus in critical parts of their working biology, including in the spiral backbone of DNA, which is a crucial component for all known life, the researchers said. By depending on an element so toxic to normal life, the microbes are a living demonstration of the exotic substances that alien biochemistry might, in theory at least, use on other worlds.
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