http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life

Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn't share the biological building blocks ofanything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything.

At their conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.

But not this one. This one is completely different. Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While she and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth.

No details have been disclosed about the origin or nature of this new life form. We will know more today at 2pm EST but, while this life hasn't been found in another planet, this discovery does indeed change everything we know about biology. I don't know about you but I've not been so excited about a bacteria since my STD tests came back clean. And that's without counting yesterday's announcement on the discovery of a massive number of red dwarf stars, which may harbor trillion of Earths. [NOS—In Dutch]

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Exciting! I didn't think we would find a life form so fundamentally different from our own on our planet, but lo and behold!

Congratulations to NASA on the great discovery!

EDIT: It's not right guys, here's the explanation:

Well that's much better then expected.

Interesting. This little bacteria is indeed different of anything we know and probably will earn a kingdom to itself on biology. I wonder how far in time it's ancestors ditched the phosphorus in their DNA for arsenic (prolly what happened here, a form of biochemistry long theorized but obviously never proved).

Wow the announcement exceeded expectations

this is a fantastic discovery

I'd really like to know how it adapted over time to use arsenic though.

It could be actually us that adapted over time to use phosphorus.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826533.600-early-life-could-have-relied-on-arsenic-dna.html

With arsenic's effect on us, what happens if clumsy scientist let this loose on the Earth???

intriguing; this really does warp ideas of what can sustain life

Well it's just a bacteria with arsenic in DNA found in a very specific place. I doubt it could thrive anywhere else. I doubt it is any more of a danger than any of millions of bacteria species out there.

Even if you found "arsenic mushrooms", for instance, you'd need to eat 1 kg worthy of them so the arsenic is enough to kill you.

I suppose it can't multiply itself in normal earth conditions since it isn't full of Arsenic, but Phosphorus instead

Not really, arsenic DNA has been theorized for a long time. We already have algae with arsenic in their sugars and proteins.