"How do we know that life arose from nonliving material? Is there experimental data to confirm this?"
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Question
Are there possible alternatives to nucleic acids for the encoding of genetic information?
This is a difficult question to answer. Terrestrial life uses only nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) to store and transmit genetic information from one generation to the next. Quite possibly alien life has developed different methods to carry out these functions, based on other complex molecules. But these ideas are purely speculative at present. David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
April 24, 2006
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