Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Is Titan Alive?

Chemical rates versus mutation

I've been thinking about the problem of life in super cold environments. Titan certainly has all the raw ingredient for DNA based life. We know there are short hydrocarbon chain molecules on Titan. Life on Titan could not use water as its working fluid because water is "solid rock" on Titan. One could argue that liquid ethane or methane could function as a working fluid. However the temperatures are so low that the chemical reaction rates driving DNA/RNA assembly and transcription would proceed glacially slow if they could occur at all. DNA has elaborate build in mechanisms for error suppression. However if the DNA chemical rates were proceeding super slow then radiation and chemical induced mutations would overwhelm the error suppression mechanisms.

This is outside my area of expertise. It does seem intuitive that there is a minimum allowed temperature for DNA based life. Don't waste your time talking about biology based upon non-DNA processes because we probably could not recognize it as "life", e.g. is fire "alive", are crystals "alive", are nuclear fusion reactions in the Sun "alive", etc.

Gary

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