New Life Form Discovered!

Just recently a new bacteria was found that is way different than any other type of life form on our planet Earth. It is allowed to use arsenic when building its DNA, RNA, cell membranes, and proteins.  Life forms to our knowledge was created by six different components. These six are carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. However a new life form that was named GFAJ-1 was discovered that uses a arsenic instead of phosphorus. It was discovered in Mono Lake, California. This is shocking because first of all, arsenic is poisonous to basically every living organism except for a small amount of microscopic creatures. The second thing that is amazing is that this means that when searching for other life in space, we can now look for life on planets that are not the exact same setup as planet earth. This just blew my  mind because this opens up so many new ways to search for life in the Universe. I also enjoyed reading about this new bacteria because in my PD BIO class we learned how phosphorus and sulfur and the other four components are used in living organisms so it was cool to see it being applied in life. I just love reading things about science and nature because I really like to know how our world works and operates. If you want to read more, the link is: http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life