English help

In my opinion that's an implied second conditional.

Perhaps

(If such an organism was found/existed,) the holy grail would be a microbe that contained no phosphorus at all.

ok thanku.

I think we are wrong because would be clause does not take past participle.

abdul quddushe holy grail would be a microbe that contained no phosphorus at all.

Contained - is a simple past tense verb used in a relative clause, not a past participle here.

dimsumexpressContained - is a simple past tense verb used in a relative clause, not a past participle here.

Right on! [Y]

but would be clause takes simple present.

Friend,
There is not such thing as a "would be " clause. What you showed us is a sentence constructed with a "relative" clause (that). I am not sure of the full context from which you extracted the sentence in question, but sometimes a sentence would appear to be so syntactically obscure that the reader may have a difficult time understanding what precisely it means. Having said that, consid

it is the whole paragraph;

"This organism has dual capability - it can grow with either phosphorus or arsenic," said Davies. "That makes it very peculiar, though it falls short of being some form of truly 'alien' life belonging to a different tree of life with a separate origin. However, GFAJ-1 may be a pointer to even weirder organisms. The holy grail would be a microbe that contained

Ok, that still doesn't change my earlier comments. Contained - is a simple past verb.

abdul quddus The holy grail would be a microbe that contained no phosphorus at all."

Hi, abdul.

I'm not sure what it is that you're asking.

The holy grail would be a microbe. The best thing would be [to find] a microbe.

These are both complete sentences.
The only thing they do for the subordinate clause which follo