Well, hmm, ok, I'll take a stab at it. The reason it's important is
that it may be the tip of the iceberg of a category of alternative
biologies, ie 'if this can happen what else can' - is this kind of thing
prevalent? If there are alternative biologies (or 'shadow ecologies')
beyond what we have considered, then the question arises: where are
they? There will be new ways for astrobiologists to look for
signatures for life on other planets. Remember that not too long ago we
didn't know about extremophiles or the archaea.
One other possible big thing would be, if there is a whole new category
of alternative biologies (a ways to go before we can consider that
seriously), and some of those are present here on earth, maybe even
within us, then it's analogous to dark matter; we quite possibly don't
know as much about our own biological or evolutionary dynamics as we
currently think we know and a lot of current models will end up being
bantha pudu. And just as extremophiles have opened up new frontiers in
biotech, so will these if they turn out to be prevalent, in ways we
can't conceive of yet. For example, there's coal, the burning of which
yields a bunch of arsenic - if we have a bunch of life forms that like
arsenic, then we have been thrown an interesting curve and our world, at
least from today's perspective, may get very weird indeed. Maybe
that's not saying much.
So this is one of those science surprises, that may be game-changing.
Carl
On 12/2/10 9:14 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
Strange set of comments. Why so much defensiveness? I asked why the
discovery was important. It was only a question. It wasn't an implied
assertion that it wasn't important. All I wanted was an intuitive
explanation for why it was important. And in fact the paragraph that I
quoted in my second post was the sort of answer I was looking for.
It may seem "blatantly obvious to [Glen] that the substitution of As
for P in DNA is important," It wasn't to me, which is why I asked.
Also the article Glen pointed to didn't say that As was substituted
for P in DNA in particular. Nor was the paragraph Glen quotes in that
article--not that I would have understood it anyway. I would still
have asked what that means to a layman and why it matters.
Nor does saying that it's as important as the first rock that fall
upward would be important physically answer the question of why it's
important. It's just an assertion that it is important.
So my question now is why did such a simple and straightforward
question elicited such defensive responses.
/-- Russ /
/
/
/P.S. I don't get the any gradient in a storm joke. Yes, I know that
life has to do with gradients, but how is that related to this issue? /
On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Nicholas Thompson
<nickthomp...@earthlink.net <mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net>> wrote:
I would say it’s about as important biololgically as the first
rock that falls up would be important physically!
n
*From:*friam-boun...@redfish.com
<mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>
[mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com
<mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>] *On Behalf Of *Roger Critchlow
*Sent:* Thursday, December 02, 2010 6:03 PM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built
With Toxic Chemical
On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 4:39 PM, glen e. p. ropella
<g...@tempusdictum.com <mailto:g...@tempusdictum.com>> wrote:
[*] FWIW, I find it odd for you to ask, of this particular
article, "why
is this important?" Of all the obscure, mumbo-jumbo journal articles
out there (our discussion of PoMo aside ;-), it seems blatantly
obvious
to me that the substitution of As for P in DNA is important, even
if we
don't know what the implications are. I am woefully ignorant of the
literature, though. Is it fairly common to find and report
substitutes
for DNA components?
No, it's not common, it's never been reported before, all DNA and
RNA in life as we have known it up until today has been based on
phospho-esters.
-- rec --
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
