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RE: Do you think there is a 'shadow biosphere'?
July 30, 2015 at 8:02 am
(This post was last modified: July 30, 2015 at 8:02 am by Alex K.)
The same is true if we discover life on e.g. Mars - even if it looks quite different, maybe it was seeded from the same primitive source as us, and just developed in a very different direction early on. Maybe it was seeded from Mars -> Earth or vice versa early on.
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RE: Do you think there is a 'shadow biosphere'?
July 30, 2015 at 8:34 am
(This post was last modified: July 30, 2015 at 8:35 am by ignoramus.)
In one of the dna docos I watched, remember them asking this question.
Obviously to date, none have been found, but they speculated that life may not evolve any other way! And it's not that mother nature didn't try every variable.
This notion may be a universal law! So if aliens ever visit us, as long as they're not Jehova's, we can give them blood transfusions! hehe
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RE: Do you think there is a 'shadow biosphere'?
July 30, 2015 at 8:38 am
Haven't we identified a few already? Deep sea vents, sea methane mats, extremophiles come to mind.
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RE: Do you think there is a 'shadow biosphere'?
July 30, 2015 at 8:42 am
Those are all so similar to us biochemically that we're certainly related.
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RE: Do you think there is a 'shadow biosphere'?
July 30, 2015 at 8:50 am
(This post was last modified: July 30, 2015 at 8:53 am by brewer.)
Seems like a tree of life separate from humans to me. Still on earth. Microbes that don't conform. Feels like it meets the terms of the OP.
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RE: Do you think there is a 'shadow biosphere'?
July 30, 2015 at 8:58 am
(July 30, 2015 at 8:50 am)mh.brewer Wrote: Seems like a tree of life separate from humans to me. Still on earth. Microbes that don't conform. Feels like it meets the terms of the OP.
Give me an example of a microbe you think could reasonably be originating from a separate tree of life?
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RE: Do you think there is a 'shadow biosphere'?
July 30, 2015 at 9:02 am
(This post was last modified: July 30, 2015 at 9:05 am by Anomalocaris.)
(July 30, 2015 at 8:38 am)mh.brewer Wrote: Haven't we identified a few already? Deep sea vents, sea methane mats, extremophiles come to mind.
No. But the story is complicated. Extremophile archea organisms appear to have cellular chemistry incompatible to familiar bacteria! although the inheritance mechanism appears compatible. But this nonetheless has led to the suggestion procaryotes may not have all had the same origin, thus abiogenesis may have happened at least twice, once with common bacteria and another with archea. But even if that was the case, higher eukaryotes organisms including you and me show evidence of having inherited the organism chemistry from both archea and bacteria. So even if there had been two different roots to the biological family tree, the separate trunks intertwined and merged when the complex eukaryotic cell evolved.
A few years ago there was a peer reviewed study which suggested that the DNA of some rare extremophile bacterial incorporated a different base pair from every other organism on earth. This led to the suggestion these bacteria were more fundamentally different from other life on earth than the difference between archea and bacteria. Thus these bacterial form a truly distinct biological lineage. But both the technique and conclusion of that study have since been discredited.
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RE: Do you think there is a 'shadow biosphere'?
July 30, 2015 at 9:38 am
(This post was last modified: July 30, 2015 at 9:39 am by Alex K.)
Even if the study were legit, it has ordinary DNA, and one base pair is different, and that's supposed to be an independent tree of life? That doesn't sound very convincing. It sounds like it split a long time ago. Sure, they form a distinct lineage to a certain extent, but who doesn't...
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RE: Do you think there is a 'shadow biosphere'?
July 30, 2015 at 10:15 am
The results of that study was discredited soon enough that no one had time to seriously work out the implications of a chemically different DNA, such as at what stage of development of life would it have been feasible to undergo a change in something so vital to the ability of the parent cell to pass on its genetic material.
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RE: Do you think there is a 'shadow biosphere'?
July 30, 2015 at 10:44 am
(July 30, 2015 at 9:02 am)Chuck Wrote: (July 30, 2015 at 8:38 am)mh.brewer Wrote: Haven't we identified a few already? Deep sea vents, sea methane mats, extremophiles come to mind.
No. But the story is complicated. Extremophile archea organisms appear to have cellular chemistry incompatible to familiar bacteria! although the inheritance mechanism appears compatible. But this nonetheless has led to the suggestion procaryotes may not have all had the same origin, thus abiogenesis may have happened at least twice, once with common bacteria and another with archea. But even if that was the case, higher eukaryotes organisms including you and me show evidence of having inherited the organism chemistry from both archea and bacteria. So even if there had been two different roots to the biological family tree, the separate trunks intertwined and merged when the complex eukaryotic cell evolved.
A few years ago there was a peer reviewed study which suggested that the DNA of some rare extremophile bacterial incorporated a different base pair from every other organism on earth. This led to the suggestion these bacteria were more fundamentally different from other life on earth than the difference between archea and bacteria. Thus these bacterial form a truly distinct biological lineage. But both the technique and conclusion of that study have since been discredited. Always nice to learn something new. Thanks.
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