Phosphate is essential to all modern life forms. From providing the backbone in DNA, to driving the cell’s energy currency in the form of the nucleotide adenosine triphosphate (ATP), phosphate is a key biological building block. The chemical is so heavily involved in metabolism, the chemical reactions of life, that it is difficult to imagine life existing without it.
Yet, scientists believe that there was little phosphate readily available in the prebiotic soup in which life began. It is a chicken-and-egg conundrum. The earth’s phosphate is largely locked up in stable minerals, and life forms such as bacteria must use complex enzymes to extract it in a useful form. But how could these enzymes evolve, without using phosphate?
The lack of "bio-available" phosphorous is an un-solved problem for several theories of abiogenesis. For astrobiologists, the problem just recently became more perplexing.
Alien hunters just got some seriously bad news
http://bgr.com/2018/04/05/phosphorus-in-space-life-survey-aliens/amp/