Regarding the bacteria found in Mono Lake, CA that scientists
believe uses or can use arsenic in its DNA backbone where life
as we know it uses phosphorus (according to their experiments
depriving the microbes of phosphorus and providing much
arsenic), have researchers conjectured and tested whether the
energy currency molecule used is also arsenic-based instead of
ATP? I'd have to agree that it's highly improbably that the
GFAJ-1 strain used nucleoside triarsenates as an energy source.
There are three main lines of evidence pointed out in the
Science reviews that were published after the initial
publication of the paper. All in all, there's a reason why life
chose phosphorous instead of arsenic. Although both elements
have ions with a propensity to make ester bonds, maybe arsenic
just doesn't fit into our anthropocentric view of what life is.
This is a cool topic/question. To answer your question. The
hypothesis was based on the conjecture that there was so little
phosphorus in the culture medium that phosph