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NASA Confirms Discovery of Organism With Phosphorus-Free DNA
GNUALMAFUERTE writes "As we mentioned before, NASA's Department of Astrobiology had an important announcement to make today. It looks like Gizmodo was right. You can watch the presentation online right now. It looks like the bacteria in question uses arsenic as a phosphorus replacement in its DNA."
To be very clear, Felisa (the primary paper author) stated during the Q&A that all they know for sure is that there is not enough phosphorus in the bacteria for it's biochemical processes and the only reasonable conclusion is that arsenic is taking it's place. Not enough analysis to know percentages of what is using what.
Sounds good except for the fact that you're forgetting that arsenate is more reactive than phosphate which means the arsenate based backbone of DNA should be constantly getting ripped to shreds. Either this bacteria has found a way to protect the backbone or it has a hyper effective repair mechanism. Either would be very worth learning about. (Immortality anyone)?
Yes. This is pretty significant. I wonder if there are any viruses that can effect them. Read about the Hershey–Chase experiment if you want to see how significant this is https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hershey%E2%80%93Chase_experiment