Craig Venter Wants To Rebuild Martian Life In Earth Lab

Hugh Pickens writes "Karen Kaplan reports in the LA Times that Craig Venter is making plans to send a DNA sequencer to Mars. Assuming there is DNA to be found on the Red Planet – a big assumption, to be sure – the sequencer will decode its DNA, beam it back to Earth, put those genetic instructions into a cell and then boot up a Martian life form in a biosecure lab. Venter's 'biological teleporter' (as he dubbed it) would dig under the surface for samples to sequence. If they find anything, 'it would take only 4.3 minutes to get the Martians back to Earth,' says Venter, founder of Celera Genomics and the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR). 'Now we can rebuild the Martians in a P4 spacesuit lab.' It may sound far-fetched, but the notion of equipping a future Mars rover to sequence the DNA isn't so crazy, and Venter isn't the only one looking for Martian DNA. MIT research scientist Christopher Carr is part of a group that's 'building a a miniature RNA/DNA sequencer to search for life beyond Earth,' according to the MIT website 'The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes.' SETG will test the hypothesis that life on Mars, if it exists, shares a common ancestor with life on Earth. Carr told Tech Review that one of the biggest challenges is shrinking Ion Torrent's 30-kilogram machine down to a mere 3 kg – light enough to fit on a Mars rover."

Comments

Needs to read more SF

[petes_PoV]

Hasn't the guy read A forAndromeda?

We know what dangers this sort of thing can lead to

Re:Needs to read more SF

[Kurast]

Let us lobby him to use Windows to do it. This way, nothing will happen at all.

Re:Needs to read more SF

[davester666]

Yeah, Windows 8. There's no "Start" button!

Re:Needs to read more SF

[Sulphur]

Yeah, Windows 8. There's no "Start" button!

Also there is no "Stop" button.

DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Anonymous Coward]

It is completely ridiculous to think that life on Mars would use "DNA" and even "cells." Both are just coincidences of life on earth. There are an infinity of different ways to encode genetic information and assemble living organisms. Did these people also write the scene in Independence Day where Jeff Goldblum takes over the alien computer with his Mac?

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[History's Coming To]

That's the big question - is it a coincidence? It's entirely possible that, just as the CNO cycle is a common method of fusion in stars, that DNA, RNA or close analogues (eg Si or As based) are common ways of producing self-replicating molecules. We've only got a single data point, any speculation on the molecular basis of ET life is just that, pure speculation, until we have a second point.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[the gnat]

There are an infinity of different ways to encode genetic information and assemble living organisms.

False - there are a finite number of stable elements, and a finite number of possible covalent chemistries. Moreover, while it is in theory possible for other types of biochemistry to exist, it is most probable that life on Mars would follow similar rules to life on Earth, i.e. CNOH-based chemistry. (Additionally, as another commenter pointed out, we have no evidence for other mechanisms.) What Venter hasn't made clear in any of the articles I've read is whether he expects that any Martian life would share a common ancestor with Earth life. If he isn't operating on this assumption, than two other assumptions fall apart: a) that the structure of Martian genetic material would be so similar as to permit DNA sequencing, and b) that the resulting sequence would be interpretable in the same way as Earth DNA, to the point of being able to reconstruct a cell. The latter point in particular is simply insane if you assume independent origins.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

It's not as flexible as you might think. We have reason to believe that ribose and the nucleotides are inherently more common in the universe, and the chemical behaviour of DNA and RNA both are extremely convenient and flexible by comparison with the alternatives we've synthesized. These are artefacts of quantum physics, universal constants, and how stars die. If the universe is an experiment designed to see what conditions cause life to arise, current astrophysics would posit that we are about as standard as it gets.

The same goes for enclosing the self-replicating material in a membrane made out of lipids: some propose that the presence of lipids was required for life to start in the first place. Without some kind of solvent-filled (i.e. water-filled or ammonia-filled) cell, the only way to protect sensitive inner workings from the outside is by having a thick layer of solid material with no flexibility, which is extremely bad for evolution.

Moreover, a lot of the theories about life on Mars depend on it either (a) being cognate with life on Earth (perhaps even the cradle), or (b) having a comparable biosphere to Earth's billions of years ago. And that's without considering panspermia. Given that it's from roughly the same mix of nebula as Earth, we've already got a lot in common.

That all being said, however, Venter is once again vastly overambitious. 'Booting up' synthetic chromosomes only works in sufficiently similar chassis, and for very simple organisms (true Martian life would be radically different in terms of cell configuration and structure); an environmental sample of Ion Torrent reads is most likely not sufficient to clearly resolve specific genomes; any life on Mars is not likely to be near the surface within a rover's reach; any life near the rover's reach is probably a Terran contaminant. If anything comes out of this, it will be a new upper bound on "how many people can roll their eyes at Craig Venter."

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

We're not that blind. We can study the chemical fitness of different atoms by looking at the amount of energy it takes them to undergo various chemical reactions versus other counterparts. Silicon, despite science fiction's love for it, is an extremely inflexible atom: it can't form bonds with any of the major non-metals we use (oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus), and it can't form bonds with a number of the coordinating metal ions we use, either. You may say "oh, well, it can just use other stuff and have a big ol' alternative party," but there aren't many alternatives. Carbon is useful not only because it forms many bonds, but because it can form them with these atoms in particular, which are biochemically equivalent to tools. No tools, no catalyst, no enzyme, no metabolism, no life.

If I were a god-fearing scientist, I would tell you that we live in an experiment designed to see how frequently RNA, DNA, and polypeptide-based life evolves. (And I'm starting to worry I may eventually become one, simply because of how perfectly our biochemistry falls out of the periodic table. If there is an alternative way of doing things, it's not something obvious like swapping out one chemical.)

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[MightyMartian]

I think some sort of cell would be common to most life. It's difficult to imagine how advanced life could evolve without some sort of semi-permeable membrane.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[steelyeyedmissileman]

Silicon, despite science fiction's love for it, is an extremely inflexible atom: it can't form bonds with any of the major non-metals we use (oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus)...

Are you sure about that?

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[AC-x]

The same organic molecules that Earth life uses have shown to form under a number of conditions and membrane forming lipids are also common so while there's very little chance it would be identical it's likely that extraterrestrial life would still have many things in common biochemically, but yeah you'd need more than just an earth life-tuned DNA sequencer to be able to read and recreate it.

Unless the theory that Earth and Mars seeded each other with life via meteorite ejecta is true, in which case Earth life and theoretical Mars life may have the same common ancestor.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Sique]

Those aren't molecules, but ionic crystals. Not what we are looking for if we want to create livings.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[mikael]

A "cell" simply consists of a number of "membranes" (outside world/cell, inside cell/nucleus), some scaffolding to keep everything in place, receptor units to send/receive messages from other cells (the biological equivalent of UNIX "sockets"). Then you have the "nucleus" which is like the kernel, and there are the mitochondria areas which convert nutrients into energy as well as pores to dump waste and take in nutrients. We already know that the cell nucleus will actually "cache" genes that are in use. The amino acids that form DNA are actually found throughout the universe. There are only so many different elements that are either completely inert (Neon), stable (Carbon bonds) and extremely reactive (Fluorine).

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[mikael]

There are some life-forms which can only live in the high pressure environments of ocean sea-beds. Attempts to raise them to the surface (even with identical salinity, temperature, chemical mix) have just led to their death - they simply disintegrate. The high pressure that would crush a human, hold various chemical bonds together.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[StripedCow]

If I were a god-fearing scientist, I would tell you that we live in an experiment designed to see how frequently RNA, DNA, and polypeptide-based life evolves.

Nah, the experiment is about creating silicon life. The hydrogens, carbons, nitrogens, oxygens and phosphors are merely catalysts.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[jeffb (2.718)]

It is completely ridiculous to think that life on Mars would use "DNA" and even "cells." Both are just coincidences of life on earth. There are an infinity of different ways to encode genetic information and assemble living organisms.

Illustrate your point with at least two other examples.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[the gnat]

isn't there life in mono lake that uses Arsenic instead of Phosphorus because of the harsh conditions?

No, this has been pretty thoroughly debunked by now. There are fundamental chemical reasons why it was very unlikely to begin with, which have nothing to do with our supposedly naive assumptions about the nature of life, but are simply the unavoidable consequences of the basic properties of the elements.

life on Earth evolved the way it did because of the abundance of water, mild weather, our atmospheric pressure, and our gravity.

As far as we know, only the abundance of water is a prerequisite for terrestrial life. Organisms have been found thriving at anywhere from 0C to 100C and beyond, and at incredible depths in the oceans where the pressure would crush us. Microgravity may be unpleasant for complex animals, but bacteria are less picky.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[crunchygranola]

That all being said, however, Venter is once again vastly overambitious. 'Booting up' synthetic chromosomes only works in sufficiently similar chassis...

If you dig into this story just a little bit (look at the short piece from the Los Angeles Times linked in the summary, and follow its link to Technology Review's article), you will find what you should have suspected in the first place - this stuff about recreating Martian life on Earth is just the most sensationalistic footnote in a story that is really about detecting DNA on Mars.

The purpose of the sequencer is to find out if there is any DNA on Mars, the only way to do that in a convincing, scientifically useful way is to try to sequence it.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Velex]

You'll also note that if things didn't work out so perfectly, you wouldn't be here to invent god.

How did god evolve? Where did god come from? Why does god exist? Watches don't self-assemble or evolve from grandfather clocks; a watch implies a watchmaker. A being with the power to precisely calculate an asymmetrical space-time manifold where physical laws can come into being that allow something like stars and galaxies to even work must be much more complex than a watch. Who is god's watchmaker?

But as we know it was probably four elephants on the back of a turtle, and then it's a sequence of turtles, each more elaborate than the last to be the watchmaker for the next turtle.

Religion is fun and all until somebody gets hurt. I don't know where things are going with the religious right, but just keep in mind that if religion tells you that the only way to avoid hell and go to heaven is to kill somebody like me, that person might just be carrying concealed.

Probably best to stick to the real world. Fewer people get killed and fewer families get torn apart when there aren't sky wizards involved.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[j00r0m4nc3r]

It is completely ridiculous to think that life on Mars would use "DNA" and even "cells."

I would say it's completely ridiculous to close your mind to such possibilities. There was a time when people thought it was ridiculous to think the Earth revolved around the sun. You would have been one of those numbskulls, had you been born a while earlier... Stop presuming to know everything.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

O-ho. :) I see what you did there.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

Unfortunately, of course, as someone else noted, DNA on Earth really doesn't fare well in the face of exposure. We only have extremely old pieces because of exceptionally calm environments (trapped in amber, frozen deep in permafrost) that either don't really exist on Mars or would require a lot more digging than your average probe can handle. Not that it wouldn't be totally awesome...

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

I don't think you and I are talking about the same kind of deity. The origin of the big bang is beyond our ability to know anyway (at least, it was the last time I checked); all the hypothesis says is "gee, these conditions sure are lucky; what if they're part of deliberate permutations"? There's no need to get into recursive "where did it come from?" problems just because one has proposed a watchmaker; if anything, the question stands anyway. It's just a silly conjecture; nothing more, and quite honestly does not even qualify as religion.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Mashdar]

Not to mention that I'm pretty sure I have a proof for the existance of watchmakers. So GP's logic is begging the question....

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[kesuki]

the big bang theory is as bad as any religion. we cannot and never could detect see or monitor the compression of water. without water compression the big bang theory is impossible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift redshift however can be measured and explained. radio telescopes can do some pretty cool stuff too. the hubble found so many galaxies that the big bang is further tested...

my point? don't mix politics with religion or religion with science or science with politics. why? because religion is used to manipulate people, politics is a futile effort to give power, and science is easy for both of the former to misuse, such as the big bang theory, if you belive the science our bodies are a fusion of trillion of cells of varying sizes, which i am sure you're more current on that than i am...

also i have seen 'probiotics' claiming to conatain 65 billion viable organisms per dose(2 pills). if there are 60 billion of them in 2 pills there must be trillions of good bacteria in the body itself. i know from a microscope i used to have that i could see many small things moving around in various samples.. my point? science can prove some things, i know scientists are in the job of selling hypothesis not statements of unerring fact. but i can grasp a lot from science. telling normal people that there is no flying spaghetti monster for them to worship by eating it. is rather hard even for trained professionals. they want their hot button issue so they can move on with their daily lives.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[dudpixel]

unless we share a common ancestor, which is what they're trying to find evidence for...

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't fathom what the point of your post is. First, you claim that Big Bang theory is as bad as any religion, by which I presume it's all based on faith. Then you make some statement about water compression - in what way is that related to the Big Bang?? Moreover, if you believe that water is completely incompressible, you are very much mistaken. Sure, in our undergraduate Thermodynamics classes we presume that liquids are incompresible as it greatly simplifies the analyses; however, water is most definitely, measurable compressible, as indeed are all substances.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[crunchygranola]

Two points.

First, there are actually caves on Mars, some of which look like subsidence craters (caused by subsurface erosion). A life seeking probe (or a sample gathering minion) would likely be dispatched into one of these natural tunnels where the environment is perpetually sheltered from the sun and wind erosion. Drilling into the wall of the subsurface tunnel seems feasible and is getting rather deep into the Martian soil.

I am pretty sure that the most sensitive test in existence for the presence of life is the detection of DNA. A DNA sequencer is basically our best sensor for detecting life-as-we-know-it. It is light-years more advanced that the flask-culture experiment attempt on the Viking Probes back in the 1970s. If we are going to send probes to Mars to see if it has/ever had life sending our best life-detector only makes sense.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Whiteox]

Recently I read that DNA has a half-life of only a few thousand years. Seems a bit pointless sending up a sequaencer if that's true.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Sulphur]

It is completely ridiculous to think that life on Mars would use "DNA" and even "cells." Both are just coincidences of life on earth. There are an infinity of different ways to encode genetic information and assemble living organisms. Did these people also write the scene in Independence Day where Jeff Goldblum takes over the alien computer with his Mac?

Mac viruses are dangerous.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[VortexCortex]

That's the big question - is it a coincidence? It's entirely possible that, just as the CNO cycle is a common method of fusion in stars, that DNA, RNA or close analogues.

I think that amino acid chains aren't the only way to form life, but amino acids do form and form chains when you take an environment that is like Earth's early history, and blast it with electricity (and cosmic rays).

However, If we find viable DNA on Mars it makes it much more likely that we share a common ancestor.

My concern with bringing DNA here from a now "lifeless" world is that we may find out what made that world lifeless, first hand...

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[History's Coming To]

I've never heard of a nucleic acid based life-form that reduces the total amount of life. OK, so it's possible that a big viral outbreak will kill all 7-billion-odd humans, but that results in several billion-billion-billion new viruses, so that's even more life (if you accept virii are "life"). What we could theoretically find is adaptations to protect against high levels of UV or similar, which would give us an idea of why life is non-existant or very rare on Mars, but I doubt we'd end up with an Earth devoid of life. Yes, it might all be red weed and "Ulla!", but that's still life.

End of the day though, the chances of finding any molecule that is biologically viable is even smaller than finding traces of pre-existing life, which seem faint already.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

For your edification, the human body contains (very roughly) 10,000,000,000,000 human cells and ten times that in bacterial cells and other symbiotes. Sixty-five billion is a drop in the bucket unless you've killed off your microbiome with antibiotics.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

Ouch; "can't" is the wrong word; that was bad paraphrasing on my part. It would be excessive to rule it out with any certainty. But it's still a lot less flexible—no carbonyls, ketimines, and barely-usable chair-shaped aromatics. To top it off, silicon chains break down in water unless they're padded with alternating oxygens. For the purposes of chemical evolution, this is certainly much more pressure; if we assume that molecules start off having some minimal purpose, and then grow through an inductive process towards something more useful (as we do with larger evolved structures such as the widely-publicised matter of the eye), the distance between any two viable, useful molecules has more than doubled. Of course, one can always play the "well maybe they're at extreme pH, temperature, and pressure" card, but as far as I know constructing a viable framework for alternative chemical evolution under such radical conditions has escaped publication.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

I tend to agree; at best they'd find free nucleotides, which would be useless to an Ion Torrent machine. They'll probably end up sequencing some contaminant like E. coli and we'll all have a good laugh about it.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

That's a fair cop, but keep in mind that "life can survive here" is not the same as "life can start here." I believe it's broadly agreed that the surface of the Earth as it is today would be completely inappropriate for abiogenesis, even though we run around on it routinely.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

M-Theory is merely the sample tray in the context of such a cosmic experiment. :)

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

Personally, I'd put my money on detecting RNA. Harder to catch, obviously, but also more general. (And in tongue-in-cheek mode, why not send a protein sequencer to search for novel RNases? It's hard to fathom anything more likely to survive.)

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Velex]

I don't think you and I are talking about the same kind of deity.

We are.

What other predictions does your religion make? Does it predict that evolution would never produce homosexuality? Maybe we're talking about some pagan goddess. In that case, is it the goddess that says all homosexuality is evil because the universe was made in a cosmic orgasm, or is it the goddess that says that male homosexuality (whatever a male is) is evil and female homosexuality is perfection (whatever a female is) because the cosmic orgasm was actually cosmic rape?

In either case, it's intellectual masturbation. Reality is, here I am. I'm not either gender. I was never even a guy, because my genitals were mutilated when I was born. I don't even know what being a normal guy is like. I guess genital mutilation works out fine for everybody else. However, mutilated or not, that still doesn't explain why I like guys and why females, while I can imagine what finding them attractive might be like, while I can imagine some theoretical female I might have in bed, why females just don't attract me. I used to hang out with girls in elementary school. But this idea that I'm supposed to find them sexy baffles me in the end. Guys smell sexy; girls smell like a threat. It still doesn't explain why, if I was supposed to have been a boy, homosexual or not, mutilated or not, why if little boys don't play with eww girls and little girls don't play with eww boys, it doesn't explain why a lot of my childhood friends were girls.

Fortunately, I wasn't born in a muslim country. At least over here, we try to turn a blind eye to the obvious signs that something is not fitting the religious narrative until something has to be done about it. God demands it.

I know how it goes. Religion seems innocent at first. One wants to be spiritual and create the narrative that "the world is made for me." Well, how was the world made? "It was made by a sky wizard of course, and the sky wizard made them male and female, just like me and everybody else I know," says the religious person.

It's a nice narrative, but already we're talking about a fantasy land. Give that meme some time to grow, and you begin to think that certain things are just the way god meant them to be. Of course god made four fundamental forces and had the wisdom to create quarks that could combine into other subatomic particles that could form atoms with a menagerie of properties, a handful of which are prefect to build life that can evolve with guidance from the sky wizard that can evolve gender and everything is perfect and nothing can go wrong.

For that matter, why aren't quarks male and female? What's up with this 3 gender^H^H^H^H^Hcolor thing? I thought everything was supposed to be perfect? It was a much better narrative when there were just protons and neutrons, just like boys and girls, like matter and anti-matter. Much better narrative when there was the nucleus and its electron cloud like the sun and its planets like parents and their children or a mother cat and her kittens. Why would god screw up the narrative with quarks?

So you buy into this narrative, and everything is good. Then one day, there's a guy who can't understand what's so great about girls, girls, girls!

This is obviously unpossible, unless there were a source of evil in the world. This source of evil must be eradicated along with everything it's touched. God demands it. God gave you free will, and god doesn't care if you choose to let the evil spread until you have to be thrown into eternal hellfire and damnation yourself no matter how much you thought you were doing the right thing by being moderate.

So, here we are again, with somebody ready to bloody someone else. "The homosexual is already infested with AIDS and evil and misama and all that and going to hell, so he must be killed so the evil doesn't spread. What if the evil spreads to me and I burn for eternity, too? I'd better kill him now. G

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[KingBenny]

insightful and funny, no i think he works at SETI trying to find alien patterns with human algorythms. I'm a huge fan of that project tho don't get me wrong

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[robertinventor]

That can't be quite right, because some spores on Earth are viable after hundreds of thousands of years. What makes a difference is that they have self repairing DNA, some claimed to still be viable even after millions of years. If there is life on Mars now, it might remain dormant most of the time in spores of some form or other, and waken when conditions are better even just every few hundred thousand years - or could germinate when good conditions are encountered on present day Mars. Both are reasons to possibly find spores even on the surface of Mars, viable spores, perhaps it's those that they are targeting, or anything else like that. The life itself might not be on the surface especially near the equator - but the spores might be.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

Here's a citation regarding non-planar silicon resonance structures which the discoverers have labelled 'aromatic'. You may wish to classify it as an abuse of terminology. :)

Out of the alternative backbones, only TNA has been demonstrated to be easier to generate spontaneously than RNA; GNA in particular is known to be more complicated than RNA. TNA also has the advantage of a similar gap between nucleotides with RNA, making hybrids or mixtures possible. But if RNA is present, a DNA backbone, to me at least, seems inevitable, largely because deoxyribose is chemically easy to synthesize from ribose. For other backbone systems to really be viable, I believe topics such as catalytic potential (can it cut itself like RNA? what about other molecules?), EM mutability (what kind of changes do various frequencies of light cause? are they different from in DNA?), helix geometry (does it form an accessible groove in H2O or NH3 solution? would a non-curved backbone be fragile?), and annotatability (e.g. can methylation or something akin to it be easily detected by interacting molecules?) would need to be explored.

Given that some oligomers of RNA have already been found spontaneously forming, other backbones don't seem like they would, again, be very competitive.

...that all being said, I have nothing against alternatives to Watson-Crick base pairs, although a good source for making an argument from natural abundance currently escapes me.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

I am saying "Hey, ha, it looks like the universe's parameters have a high probability of self-replicating molecules! Wouldn't it be funny if the universe's parameters were deliberately tuned that way? Or if someone was randomly selecting parameters just to see what would happen?"

That is all I am saying. Everything—everything—you are trotting out as an example of religion is a byproduct of misguided social planners and self-interested scoundrels. Your view of the world is profoundly coloured by your experiences with those schemes, and you are describing the boiled-down afterbirth of things that were invented specifically to control people. When I spoke of the notion of deliberateness in the nature of the universe, I was speaking as a rational person who is fully aware that discussing such things could never have an effect on how we conduct our lives, and, at any rate, never should.

That you cannot draw a distinction between such speculation and structured religion is evidence that you have no place in such an innocent and inconsequential discussion. Claiming that speculation inevitably leads to religion is as absurd as any other claim that religion is unavoidable, and implies that education is futile, which is an extremely anti-intellectual posture.

Your reaction might as well be a cry of heresy or a call for a witch-burning. Go yell at a psychiatrist, move somewhere further north, and spend less time on the Internet.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

...I thought I'd seen something about amber preservation, but wow, what a load of retractions. Once again, Michael Crichton fails to deliver.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Velex]

I didn't claim speculation led to religion. I claimed that religion leads to violence. There's a difference.

Religion and science are speculation both, but the difference is that religion accepts things that merely make us feel better about ourselves. In science, speculation that's wrong gets rejected.

In religion, it's perfectly ok to kill, maim, or harm somebody who is or says something that makes one feel uncomfortable. In science, it's a bit different. The recommended approach in science is to criticize, not kill.

Re:DNA is an Earth-specific coincidence

[Samantha Wright]

I would have trouble believing you can't name a religion that doesn't have a history of violence.

An organized religion (not religion as a whole, but just any given religion) is nothing more than a set of tools for social control based on irrational beliefs. Whether that gets used for good or evil is the decision of whomever holds the reins. It is not a guarantee that religion will inevitably be used to exclude or harm.

DNA Half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the half-life of DNA is only 521 years. I don't know, but I would be highly skeptical of there having been life on the planet within that time period.

Re:DNA Half-life

[History's Coming To]

It's conceivable that with a large enough sample size you could find common protein encoding sections which would allow you to, for example, discover whether photosynthesis was in operation and which chemicals were involved, giving a rough idea of the types of plant life, if not Jurassic Park style examples of individual species.

Re:DNA Half-life

[crunchygranola]

You didn't even read the Nature abstract on the DNA degradation story. Not everywhere on Earth is like a New Zealand swamp. The researchers estimated that a bone at an ideal preservation temperature of 5 C would be readable out to 1.5 million years. And this is in the "almost ubiquitous" presence of ground water. On a very dry planet which has dry ice glaciers (average Martian surface temp -63 C) DNA and an oxygen-free atmosphere DNA should be preservable for very long times. And if there is still biological activity, however rare, it should leave behind very lingering DNA traces, if DNA based.

Let's just kill this idea with science right now.

[Dzimas]

Morten et al recently examined DNA in 158 bone fossils and determined the half-life of DNA to be 521 years in their sample. Even if Martian DNA functioned in the same manner, the idea that environmental conditions on Mars were suitable to sustain life as late as the year 1491 is ludicrous. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10/05/rspb.2012.1745.abstract?sid=abb89d94-00f1-431b-8863-c62996e35478

What could possibly go wrong?

[Hognoxious]

What could possibly go wrong?

P.S. UUULLLAAAAAA

Jurassic Mars

[moniker127]

As long as we're making movie pitches, they may as well have titles.

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's under Earth conditions, with the limited atmosphere on Mars perhaps the time would be much longer. Just a guess, but I don't think there's anything in DNA that is actually radioactive in a traditional half-life sense, so I'm assuming that is due to environmental conditions.

One small problem

[Nidi62]

I don't think any traces of amber have been found on Mars. And we all know you can't get preserved DNA unless you can find some amber.

Makes you wonder

[poity]

What if advanced extraterrestrials have already done this to us, and there's a "Jurrasic Earth" somewhere with cloned humans running around for them to study? *gasp* What if Earth is their "P4 spacesuit lab" equivalent, and we began as laboratory clones of an organism from another system?

Re:Makes you wonder

[moniker127]

Wait, did you just pitch Prometheus?

Re:Makes you wonder

[poity]

are you saying my shit fuck is worse than Prometheus?

Re:Makes you wonder

[SteveFoerster]

Relax, since nothing is worse than Prometheus, your shit fuck is safe.

The program is useless without the CPU

[hmbcarol]

Having the exact stream of bytes of an ARM program will do you no good if you place it in an x86 CPU and expect it to run. Or even one variant of an ARM to another with different I/O, timers, etc. Simply transferring entire genomes between far distant organisms on Earth won't work. When the organisms are distant enough from each other there is variance in the code itself (stop codons, etc) and the machinery the specific code will be manipulating must be there to be controlled. Ribosomes vary, organelles certainly vary. In fact it's rather presumptive of us to assume the genetic mechanism must be DNA or RNA when there are probably all sorts of other mechanisms that would work suitably. Even presuming life had a common origin and there was some event that seeded Mars with Earth bacteria (or the other way around) a few billion years ago, doesn't mean there is the slightest chance it's in any way compatible with anything that could be found on Earth today. Very different environments will select for very implementations over those billions of years.

Re:The program is useless without the CPU

[tbonefrog]

Mars life has about as much chance of surviving in an earth bacterium in an earth lab as we have surviving in the Martian environment. Either that or it will go all andromeda strain, so make sure to have some alcoholics around to trigger the self destruct switch before it escapes.

dumb

[slashmydots]

Yeah, with little if any magnetic field and barely any atmosphere so tons of radiation reaching the surface, and an unlikely chance that alien life has DNA as we know it, that sounds like a great idea.

Re:dumb

[SecurityGuy]

I'm with you on this one. This strikes me as epic stupidity. Sending something to a planet where we haven't found any life yet to get DNA from the life we haven't ever found? Knock yourself out, I guess, but none of my tax dollars, please.

Re:dumb

[bunbuntheminilop]

There's a possibility *below* the surface. I know it's slim, and a little far fetched, but *if* there was going to be life, it would probably be in Martian caves etc http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20111102.html

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[Belial6]

I don't believe it does. They only determined that the half-life of a particular animal in a particular location has been 521 years. The study specifically point out that it was for a specific location. It also specifically points out that environmental factors play a role in how long DNA lasts.

It looks like the study point to the idea that DNA degrades exponentially, but it does not pin that degradation to a specific rate.

Mission Briefing

[thygate]

Bring back sample at any cost. Quarantine LT. Ripley Crew Expendable

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[poity]

This is going to be a layman's attempt at grasping "half-life" as applied to large molecule strands, but if we assume that no two strands decay in the same way, would it not be possible to increase the sample size so that what's missing from one could be found in another?

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[slashping]

Sure, but even if you assume a half life of 10,000 years, there's not going to be much left after a few billion years. And Mars looks like a nasty place for DNA to survive, so it's more likely that 521 years is overly optimistic.

It looks like ...

[PPH]

... Natasha Henstridge.

Hey! Wait a minute!

[archatheist]

Didn't I just read on this very site (or possibly Gizmodo; they all run together) that Jurassic Park was impossible because DNA degrades too fast? So how is this going to work? Because I'm pretty sure DNA (if that was how Martian life worked) would be subject to conditions that were even more harsh.

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[Anonymous Coward]

You can but like optimistic estimate, 10000 year half life and 100 000 000 years time, you would have 10000 half lives which would leave you with (1/2)^10000 of the original material which is zero to I think even floating point precision (5x10^-3011 according to wolfram). So you'd need to start with 10^3000 molecules of DNA to find even one remaining now.

Send it to Enceladus instead

[Ranger]

We've been exploring Mars for 40+ years now and so far we've not found evidence of life. We are much closer answering the question if it did or does, and I won't be surprised if we find microfossils and even life, but the parameters are very narrow. Now if we send a DNA sequencer to a icy moon of Jupiter or Saturn that has an ocean under it's ice, the odds of finding life go up dramatically. Europa would have been my first choice but we have to get through that thick crust. Enceladus would be even better. It's spewing liquid water into space. So we know where the crust is thinnest. And it does have the ingredients for life.

We have met the Martians, and they are us.

[mbone]

Biological material has been interchanged back and forth between the Earth and Mars for billions of years. Based on that, I would bet that there is Martian life, and that it and terrestrial life evolved together.

Re:We have met the Martians, and they are us.

[Baloroth]

Biological material has been interchanged back and forth between the Earth and Mars for billions of years. Based on that, I would bet that there is Martian life, and that it and terrestrial life evolved together.

That is incredibly unlikely. Biological material != life, and by all accounts actually making that transition requires very specific environmental conditions which it isn't clear were ever present on Mars (though we can't know that for sure, as we don't even know what the original conditions were, it's almost certain Earth-like life could never live there: oxygen content is too low, radiation is too high, planet is too cold, etc).

Re:We have met the Martians, and they are us.

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Biological material != life, and by all accounts actually making that transition requires very specific environmental conditions

A lot can happen in billions of years. So much in fact that I would guess we really have no clue about what kinds of crazy shit has happened since the solar system formed, let alone the universe...

Re:We have met the Martians, and they are us.

[mbone]

Why ? I don't consider it unlikely at all. We know that Mars in the early days had a thicker atmosphere and a fair amount of liquid water. (Note, BTW, that life, including spores and various forms of dormant life, is specifically what is meant by biological material.)

Please don't forget that Mars has strong obliquity / orbit driven climate cycles. There are times when the atmospheric pressure (and probably even the humidity) are considerably higher than at present. We are talking about many tons of material being exchanged, over a long period of time. As j00r0m4nc3r points out, a lot can happen in a billion years of experimental trials.

At any rate, this gives a very specific prediction : any Martian life will share DNA with terrestrial extremophiles. Why do you think the SETG is building their sequencer? Exactly to test this. My money would be on it succeeding.

When was the breakthrough here?

[WillAdams]

You're saying they can sequence a life form in one lab and reconstruct it in another lab w/o a physical template of any kind?

Has there been a breakthrough beyond:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/05/scientists-create-first-self-replicating-synthetic-life/

(which AIUI required the shell an existing cell)

Re:When was the breakthrough here?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

At least someone is trying.

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[mbone]

Why? What happened in 1492? (Assuming Columbus didn't secretly go to Mars.)

You are assuming that there is no current life on Mars. If there ever was life on Mars, it is highly likely to be extant now. The deep biosphere on Earth shows this.

Now, will you be able to find it on the surface landing in some random spot ? That is another matter; I suspect that just having a 3 kg sequencer may not be enough. A rover with an oil derrick attached is going to weigh a bit more...

What about my wants?

[wonkey_monkey]

I want to build a time machine so I can go back in time and meet the Martians when their society was at its peak. Why aren't the LA Times calling me?

Re:What about my wants?

[Stirling Newberry]

Make a lot of money and you are an eccentric visionary. Until then, you are just a frustrated nerd.

Re:What about my wants?

[wonkey_monkey]

Until then, you are just a frustrated nerd.

Hey, how do you...

Oh, right.

Re:What about my wants?

[Stirling Newberry]

It's OK, that's why we come to slashdot, I mean the frustrated nerd support group.

Re:Hey! Wait a minute!

[amiga3D]

Shhhhhh! You'll ruin the ending!

A terraforming genome would make more sense

[Aviation Pete]

Craig Venter should be close to be able to tailor an organism which can survive on Mars and start terraforming the planet, so in future it has more atmosphere and can help to heat the planet for future colonisation.

Now that would be a worthwhile endeavor. This teleporting thing is just headline-grabbing and has no scientific merit.

Re:A terraforming genome would make more sense

[SteveFoerster]

Terraforming is that it would be expensive now but only offer a potential return after millenia have passed. Who thinks that long term nowadays?

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[SecurityGuy]

Less atmosphere would mean more radiation, so if anything, the DNA would degrade faster.

Re:On Earth?

[jamstar7]

I agree. A xenogenetics lab on Earth is not a good idea, especially if they decide to work with 'hot' DNA. Better to put it on the Moon, or even better, in a free orbit between Earth and Mars so that if something does go wrong, the solar wind will blow the bugs out of the solar system.

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[mikael]

Perhaps there are oil fields in Mars. What used to be trees and dinosaur snacks on Earth is now large pools of hydrocarbons or Kerogen.

The only way you could tell something was DNA, would be through the ratios of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and oxygen:

Kerogen from the Green River Formation oil shale deposit of western North America contains elements in the proportions carbon 215 : hydrogen 330 : oxygen 12 : nitrogen 5 : sulfur 1.[2]

Re:On Earth?

[deadhammer]

I agree. A xenogenetics lab on Earth is not a good idea, especially if they decide to work with 'hot' DNA. Better to put it on the Moon, or even better, in a free orbit between Earth and Mars so that if something does go wrong, the solar wind will blow the bugs out of the solar system.

Nonsense.

Xenogenetics labs working on tiny fragments of alien DNA (or equivalent) would be of no danger whatsoever. How do I know? Bacteria. Millions of species of hardy, survivalist badasses that have survived through more globe-spanning apocalypses than you've had hot dinners. So let's say there's an accident and some tiny sequenced fragments of alien genetics fall into a pond somewhere. Assuming A) the environment doesn't immediately kill them and B) they're complete enough to form autonomous life, they'll have to contend with the fact that they're competing for survival against creatures that are built to survive the shit that Earth throws at them. Not a chance in hell.

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[Gavagai80]

Depends where you mean. There's tons of simple life deep below the surface of the Earth, so why not below Mars where it'd be protected from raduation?

Re:Start with the basics first...

[Convector]

Let's try it first with some extant Earth life, a gila monster or bacterium or something for which we know the answer. There's no point in sending this to Mars before we can make it work on Earth.

Re:On Earth?

[jamstar7]

I agree. A xenogenetics lab on Earth is not a good idea, especially if they decide to work with 'hot' DNA. Better to put it on the Moon, or even better, in a free orbit between Earth and Mars so that if something does go wrong, the solar wind will blow the bugs out of the solar system.

Nonsense.

Xenogenetics labs working on tiny fragments of alien DNA (or equivalent) would be of no danger whatsoever. How do I know? Bacteria. Millions of species of hardy, survivalist badasses that have survived through more globe-spanning apocalypses than you've had hot dinners. So let's say there's an accident and some tiny sequenced fragments of alien genetics fall into a pond somewhere. Assuming A) the environment doesn't immediately kill them and B) they're complete enough to form autonomous life, they'll have to contend with the fact that they're competing for survival against creatures that are built to survive the shit that Earth throws at them. Not a chance in hell.

Sure, the odds are against it. Probably, the odds are better for you to hit the Lotto, the Powerball and keno in Vegas on the same day. But do you really want to roll those dice? I'm crazy. I'm not stupid. There's a considerable difference. And I don't believe in taking unnecessary risks.

Try it on extinct Earth life first

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Since Mars life would be greatly more different to Earth life, even if we assume the truth of "panspermia" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia), wouldn't it make more sense for Venter to trial his method first on extinct, preferably macroscopic life forms here? The bigger the better. Extinct germs would be more difficult to get rid of than a rampaging T-rex that any survivalist nutcase can gun down. My prime candidate would be those frozen Siberian mammoths, which he could clone into caveman steak.

Re:Try it on extinct Earth life first

[__aaltlg1547]

Chances are a lot better with extinct microbes. Smaller genomes would be easier to repair and get working in a cell.

And I doubt extinct microbes would be that much of a threat even if released in the wild. They'd be many generations behind in the ongoing biological arms race between infectious agents and macrobiota and quite possibly defenseless against what modern plants and animals can throw at them. Remember, we are all descended from the animals that made any resurrected bacteria extinct.

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[Belial6]

I don't know why you say that. If it is water that makes DNA degrade, Mars seems like a better place than Earth.

Re:On Earth?

[kesuki]

a living organism capable of breaking through other organisms cellular membranes is already common. as common as the common cold.

and yes it can cause death if pnumonia sets in.

so whats the worst that can happen? a super bug? we've almost got that thanks to misuse of antibiotics.

The Walking Dead...

[MrWin2kMan]

And you wonder how the Zombie Apocalypse began...

Venter is fond of sensationalism

[Giftmacher]

Here we go again, Venter is less of a scientist more of a salesman and self publicist. Take a vaguely interesting idea and throw in a good dose of hyperbole and voila instant headline. Mention Mars and recreating life from there and the news outlets slavishly snap it up no matter how stupid the idea is... Honestly, there's very little of interest to see here, not least because we're not even sure there's life to find and sequence yet. Tiresome.

Re:Let's just kill this idea with science right no

[oreiasecaman]

I guess you don't really understand the concept of a half life , do you? But I agree that there wouldn't be any DNA to be found on Mars, since it is pretty much sterile for over a billion years already.