The hunt for extraterrestrial life should be dramatically expanded, a panel of scientists convened by the country’s leading scientific advisory group said today, to include what they call “weird life,” organisms that lack DNA or other molecules found in life as we know it.It's a very exciting article.
(Salto's own contributor Monster, oddly enough, is an example of weird life. As I understand it, Monster lacks normal DNA characteristics of Earth life, and is, instead, "bulbourethral." Don't ask me; I don't know.)
I'll ask my evolutionary biologist friend to submit a comment in response.
MORE: Here's what Dr. M has to say about this:
Whatever Carl Zimmer says is true. He's smart and likes parasites, so I like him.
In response to the article, I think a number of things and I will list them here in no particular order.
1. No doubt about it, weird life exists. It is simply a probability thought experiment. How could it not exist?
2. A problem for most of the scientific fields is that even if we find weird life, that's not enough. We need large sample sizes to be able to make statements about governing principles. Biologists have done their best to draw principles from our one instance (we think) of life on earth. If we found life on Planet Diaz, for example, and it was say, silicon-based...what does that really mean other than we now know there are two different platforms that work for life. But if it were carbon-based, obviously that doesn't mean that all "weird" life must be carbon-based. Hence the need for discovering at least 10 different instances of weird life.
3. On top of weird life elsewhere, there is some seriously weird life here. I'm all for trying to find weird life, but not at the expense of the weird life we have right here, present company included.
4. I don't have a deep enough understanding of what chemical principles would be likely to pertain to all forms of weird life, regardless of what elements such life might be based on. However, whatever the chemistry may be, I would bet that natural (and perhaps sexual) selection plays a large role in generating the diversity of weird life. But then, I'm a convert.
