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DNA Is Only One Among Millions Of Possible Genetic Molecules (2019)
- gus_massa 4y agoNote that they didn't prove that these millions of molecules are good replacements for DNA/RNA in an alien life form. They just enumerate all the possible variants that are similar enough to be the building blocks of DNA/RNA. Proving that they are good replacements would involve proving they are stable, good to copy, good to repair, and a few other operations that use specialized proteins, and guessing which are the best proteins for the new molecules is impossible with the current technology. The result is useful because they can feed the list to other software simulation that may discover useful properties on Earth: 1) Alternatives for the first DNA/RNA molecule when life begun. For example they "rediscovered" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycol_nucleic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycol_nucleic_acid 2) Alternatives that confuses bacteria or virus but not humans, and can be used as medicine, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aciclovir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aciclovir (I'm not sure if they "rediscovered" it.) But I guess those applications are interesting only to specialists.