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Greg Egan (gregegansf@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Tuesday, 17-Dec-2024 19:10:00 JST Greg Egan
in reply to
- Mark Pesce
@mpesce Not mirror life, but an alternative chemistry for the DNA bases. (People really have synthesised those alternative bases, but as with mirror DNA, they’re a long, long way from being able to build a whole organism that uses them.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeno_nucleic_acid
In conversation about a month ago from mathstodon.xyz permalink
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  Xeno nucleic acid
  
  Xeno nucleic acids (XNA) are synthetic nucleic acid analogues that have a different backbone from the ribose and deoxyribose found in the nucleic acids of naturally occurring RNA and DNA. The same nucleobases can be used to store genetic information and interact with DNA, RNA, or other XNA bases, but the different backbone gives the structure different stability, and it cannot be processed by naturally occurring cellular processes. For example, natural DNA polymerases cannot read and duplicate this information, thus the genetic information stored in XNA is invisible to DNA-based organisms. As of 2011, at least six types of synthetic sugars have been shown to form nucleic acid backbones that can store and retrieve genetic information. Research is now being done to create synthetic polymerases to transform XNA. The study of the production and application of XNA molecules has created the field of current xenobiology. Background The structure of DNA was discovered in 1953. Around the early 2000s, researchers created a number of exotic DNA-like structures, XNA. These are synthetic...
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  Mark Pesce (mpesce@arvr.social)'s status on Tuesday, 17-Dec-2024 19:10:01 JST Mark Pesce
  
  Didn't @gregeganSF write an SF novel which had a subplot of a bunch of billionaires trying to use 'Mirror Life' to make themselves... immune to the petty concerns of mere mortals?
  https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158
  
  In conversation about a month ago permalink
  
  Charlie Stross repeated this.

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