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- Aug 1, 2009
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http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...ng-bacteria-may-expand-hunt-for-new-life.html
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/...senic-dna-phosphorus-wolfe-simon.html?ref=rss
Pretty neat.
Basically they found bacteria that could use arsenic in the place of phosphorous, which no other organism has ever been able to do before. While it's less efficient, it could allow life to develop in places where it normally couldn't.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/...senic-dna-phosphorus-wolfe-simon.html?ref=rss
Pretty neat.
Basically they found bacteria that could use arsenic in the place of phosphorous, which no other organism has ever been able to do before. While it's less efficient, it could allow life to develop in places where it normally couldn't.
Wolfe-Simon and her collaborators then ran chemical tests on the proteins, fats and DNA inside the cells and found arsenic in them all. The arsenic in the DNA was in the chemical form necessary to form bonds to carbon and oxygen, leading Wolfe-Simon to propose that the arsenic had taken the place of phosphorus in the DNA's chemical structure.
he added that while arsenic-based DNA is believed to be chemically unstable at room temperature, it might be stable enough to be the basis of life in very cold environments such as Saturn's moon Titan, where the average temperature is about –180 Celsius