No phosphorus? No worries! Marine life finds substitutes.

The article offers information on a research headed by Benjamin Van Mooy, a geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, on substitute lipids in relation to building cell membranes. Van Mooy states that these lipids are the most abundant membrane molecules in the sea. It indicates that scientists have believed until now that membranes surrounding cells solely depending on phospholipids which contain phosphorus and other biochemical nutrients like nitrogen.