If life arose using carbon as its main ingredient. then is it possible that another element could be the main ingredient in a life cycle somwhere else?
Say on a planet where the temprature is a little lower and there are oceans of something that would be a gas on earth. maybe liquified xenon is pumping through the veins of a molybdneum based life form?
I dont know what would be a good substitute for carbon, I dont have a table of the elements in front of me.

It seems to me that Carbon has specific properties that lend itself to life, the ability to conduct electricity in certain forms being one of them. I have heard it suggested that silicon based lifeforms might be possible. Perhaps sulphur?

It's pretty unlikely. It's been speculated that perhaps silicon or maybe even a phosphorous/nitrogen system could give rie to life, but silicon can't make long chains that are stable, except maybe in silicones. But, silicone are polymers with a -O-Si-O-Si- backbone. This is is pretty stable I suppose but it's not a very rich source of structure. Phosphorous is too reactive in the presence of water, but could be stabilized with P-N bonds, I suppose.

Carbon is special, because not only can it bond with itself in many many ways, but it can make stable bonds with a lot of different atoms. Well, actually it only forms 3 types of bonds with itself, but the fact that it can catenate means that countless configurations are possible.

This is why carbon chemistry has its own branch of science, organic chemistry.

Life is exceedingly complex, so pretty much only carbon can provide the number of molecules with varying functional groups necessary for such a complex system.

There are lot's of things that conduct electricity to some degree or another.
Polysilanes, for just one example, has a backbone of -Si-Si-Si-, and conducts because the sigma orbitals of Si are diffuse enough to overlap.
It's this de-localization of electrons that allows for conductivity.
If a carbon polymer has a lot of double/triple bonds or benzene rings then it should conduct.

Just like graphite, which is much more conductive along the a and b axes (the axes where the graphene planes lie) because of all the electronic delocalization.

But it's a poor conductor along the c-axis, because there are only weak pi-pi interactions and little orbital overlap.

Sulfur, I suppose would be a poor candidate for the basis of life.
The only times it forms more than two bonds is if it is bonded to a very electronegative atom like oxygen or fluorine. Also, it does not catenate very easily, and if it did, it would just be a chain of sulfur (no longer than 8 atoms long) with practically no functionality.

You guys know way more about this stuff than me so i think I'll just read along and give some input when i think i have something valid to say.