Arsenic and Odd Life this week on planetary Radio. Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's Travel Show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society and this is

astrobiologist Felisa Wolf Simon.

What I presented to you today is a microbe doing something different than life as we knew it.

I was taught as a biochemist that all life on earth,

all life we know of

to hearken back to the pale blue dot ideas of Carl Sagan.

All life we know of is here so far.

And if there's an organism on Earth

doing something different, we've cracked open the door

to what's possible for life elsewhere in the universe.

And that's profound and to understand how life is formed and where life is going.

This microbe substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its

basic biomolecules. And what else might we find? What else might we want to look for?

NASA Astrobiology research fellow Felisa Wolf Simon.

She leads the team that has discovered the first life form on our planet that appears to use arsenic rather than

phosphorus for many of its most essential functions and molecules including its

DNA. We'll be postponing our conversation about the James Webb Space Telescope

so that we can bring you special coverage of this surprising and amazing discovery.

Bill Nye will give us an introduction to the topic in a couple of minutes.

Then we'll hear from Mary VoiTEC, head of NASA's Astrobiology Program. Mary joined

Felisa and other scientists in the December 2nd press conference that revealed this news.

...