ABSTRACT
In December 2010, a team of NASA researchers led by astrobiologist Felisa
Wolfe-Simon made a remarkable announcement: Bacteria living in California’s
Mono Lake can replace the phosphorous in their biomolecules with arsenic
(Wolfe-Simon, Blum, Kulp, Gordon, Hoeft, Pett-Ridge et al., 2010). A
first-of-its-kind discovery, the extraordinary biochemistry of species GFAJ-1
offered “proof” that life could exist in environments without phosphorous; that is,
in environments whose chemistries differ vastly from ours. In other words,
different kinds of life might exist on planets with scant resemblance to Earth.
