Strange Organism?

On December 3rd, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that NASA discovered a strange organism. This can grow without phosphorus. General Organisms need phosphorus. Phosphorus is a central component of carrying energy in all cells and it constructs DNA and RNA. So, it had been said that all life need phosphorus. But, this organism can use arsenic instead of phosphorus. Arsenic is deadly poison, so general organisms cannot use it. NASA says like this:

Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the six basic building blocks of all known forms of life on Earth. Phosphorus is part of the chemical backbone of DNA and RNA, the structures that carry genetic instructions for life, and is considered an essential element for all living cells.

Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.

"We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new -- building parts of itself out of arsenic," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology research fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team's lead scientist. "If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven't seen yet?

This organism is quite different from others on earth. So, this discovery activate discussions about life out of the earth. And, the beginning of the earth, there is a lot of arsenic. So, this discovery may reveal new facts about the evolution of life.