Quite the innovation —
Researchers on Thursday said they had created microbes that “very likely” use arsenic in their DNA in place of phosphorus, in what may be the first exception to the formula long thought to govern the basic chemistry of life.
Force-grown in the lab, the 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
Via Arsenic-Based Microbes Challenge Chemistry of Life – WSJ.com.