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NASA bacteria and arsenic: Why is this finding important? NASA announces

I think everyone expected the long-awaited news from the U.S. to have saved UFOs at Area 51, or perhaps show an interview with an alien of a distant galaxy. Unfortunately, sometimes the TV does not give us the best picture of reality, or worse, fills us with so many fantasies to show us "disappointed" with what happens in reality. This essay is to show that reality is much more exciting than the fiction of Hollywood.
Before explaining the finding, let's review the things we need to know to understand the significance of these bacteria:
living beings and any thing in the universe made of matter, are made up of atoms and molecules. All living things are mainly based on carbon chemistry of this element are made of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), proteins, lipids and virtually all molecules of biological significance. Carbon is so vital to life than the branch of chemistry that studies of this element is called "Organic Chemistry."
But all is not only carbon, are actually 6 more chemical elements found in living things, these are: Hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), carbon (C), nitrogen (N), sulfur (S ) and phosphorus (P). These elements are quite close in the periodic table, as shown in the image:

As you can see, for biologists only the first 3 rows of the periodic table are really interesting (Rows are called periods, the columns are called groups). And that these are the elements with biological significance. Now, one of the peculiarities of the periodic table is that the elements of the same group (column) have similar properties. Thus, sulfur (S) is the nearest chemical relative of oxygen (O), silicon (Si) is a close chemical relative of carbon (C) and arsenic (As) is a close chemical relative of phosphorus ( P) (goes around in this thing, kind).
long been known that some bacteria may use sulfur instead of oxygen to "breathe", is also known to some arthropods (animals external skeletons and jointed legs, such as spiders, insects and crustaceans) and molluscs (animals like octopus and snails) can use copper instead of iron to carry oxygen through their "blood." But all these small changes did not involve a normal change in the "architecture" of animal biochemistry. I mean, DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids are exactly the same, with the same atoms arranged in the same places. One can take DNA from a monkey, a fly, a worm, a spider and a bacterium and this will always be chemically identical, its building blocks remain the same, these pieces of Lego, they are called "Nucleotides"

As you can see, each nucleotide consists of 3 main parts, the outer part have a phosphate group (a phosphorous atom bound to 4 oxygens), which serves as a support or skeleton of the molecule (not lose sight of the phosphorus (P), this is the key figure in this.) This phosphate is attached to a sugar, which in the case of DNA called "deoxyribose" and this sugar is linked to a nitrogenous base, which can be A, T, C or G (no matter the technical name now.) This alphabet of 4 letters to decide whether you'll be a human, a chimpanzee or a jellyfish.
These nucleotides are grouped in pairs and form long chains in a ladder, which is what we all know as DNA, as shown in the image:

Now for the news: Why do these bacteria that "eat" arsenic are so impressive? The answer is that they have been the first living things that can literally swap the phosphorus by arsenic in their biochemical architecture. This means, for example, that in its DNA need not have phosphates, but can use arsenate (arsenic atom with 4 oxygen atoms). They can also replace the phosphorus in proteins, lipids and many of biological molecules.
If you meditate for a moment, we realize that life is much more "cunning" than we thought, because if there is no hand bricks to build houses, no problem, you can use some things that seem a brick that can offer the same solution.
This is a slap in the face to the entire scientific community because they thought it was an inescapable requirement of the existence of the chemical elements of the biology of our planet in other parts of the universe to find life. Now we know that we should not look the same we have here and that living beings from other planets probably have a much more exotic biochemistry and interesting than we thought.
so far not found any living being that has replaced the most widely used element in life, carbon, by someone else. But in the next essay will analyze the dream of many people and something that was very fashionable, the possibility of extraterrestrial life based on silicon chemistry.