Meet GFAJ-1, an otherworldly microbe that can grow on a legendary poison.
U.S. scientists are reporting the microbe, plucked from a California lake, can use arsenic to make proteins and other key molecules including DNA.
They say the arsenic operates as a substitute for phosphorus, long considered one of six essential elements of life.
The finding, which may have "profound evolutionary and geochemical significance," according to a report in the journal Science on Thursday, has the astrobiology world buzzing.