I would say it's about as important biololgically as the first rock that falls up would be important physically!
n From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] 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 <[email protected]> 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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