NASA researcher has found a new life form which is able to use the element arsenic in their DNA in place of phosphorus.

Biologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon who is a NASA research fellow based at the U. S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California in US who identified the creature said, "The mere fact that an organism can grow with this much arsenic, that's outrageous."

It was believed that life on earth relied on carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus with phosphorus being the primary ingredient in DNA composition. Wolfe-Simon suggests that arsenic might be able to stand in for phosphorus as it is located directly below phosphorus on the periodic table of elements and behaves.

She headed an expedition to Mono Lake, which is arsenic-rich body of water near Yosemite National Park in order to find evidence. The team gathered some mud and introduced it into an artificial broth, which was designed to recreate qualities of the natural lake water. The team also added high levels of arsenic in place of phosphorus.

The team let the mud stay in broth for several days and then placed a small portion of it into a fresh batch of the arsenic-laced broth and repeated the process seven times in three months.

The team found that organism, known as GFAJ-1, which breathes oxygen, had the ability to use arsenic to grow. Wolfe-Simon said that the team found arsenic appeared to be filling the role of phosphorus.

The ability of the bacterium to subsist such element shows that life on Earth is very flexible and could have evolved from a wider range of blacks than thought. "We've cracked open the door for what's possible with life elsewhere in the universe," said Wolfe-Simon.