More About NASA's Mono Lake Press Conference on Arsenic-containing DNA

The NASA Mono Lake press release conference has heated up to a higher intensity. Here is follow up post this blogger contributed to The Daily Galaxy web site on December 13, 2010, that updates this blog's post of December 2, 2010.

Although I also feel NASA's Mono Lake research, per se, might be flawed in design, I believe NASA had a larger purpose for the press release conference: through suggestion and implication, I feel NASA has begun to prep the public to accept expanded definitions of life so to eventually introduce the public to their reality.

Also, the Mono Lake release seems to send some signals about NASA's internal positions on the "life problem" [at this time]. First, that DNA itself is robust, hence adaptive to many environments. Second, that NASA favors the DNA morphology as a venue of bioinformation. And third, that DNA is probably to be found throughout this solar system and perhaps beyond, although perhaps restricted to the "Goldilocks" zones of far systems (?).

Personally, I find it difficult to accept that DNA, in all its complexity, is a commonly occurring, and preferred, chemical structure found throughout the planets and solar systems. Why? Because it is hard to imagine that jiggling a planet-or-moon-sized boxful of many-ported Lego chemical blocks, mainly from the first 3 rows of the periodic table with some transition and higher elements thrown in, will generally produce the DNA morphology more often than many, many other possible chemical assemblages. (But, since I am not a computer which can easily generate and compare thermodynamic advantages of different complex morphologies, maybe DNA is a preferred structure! Who knows, maybe NASA?)

So, I feel NASA's implied emphasis on DNA is either naive or founded on specific evidence. But, as I don't feel NASA is naive, it is my expectation there will be more "releases" building up to hard evidence for extra-earth life based on DNA. The corollary to this evidence is that earth life is not spontaneous in origin but might equally have been seeded, since one could expect DNA to be also transported by passenger microbes on asteroids, meteorites, etc.. In this last respect, NASA seems to have been excited about the piggy-back transport scenario for a long time - just a thought.