Good evening, Hank.

I think that setting RNA/DNA as a basis for all life in the universe is quite a jump even for NASA, considering no other life than what we have here on Earth has ever been found anywhere -- other than Hollywood.

Or even looking at some of our tiniest life forms, such as the viruses you mentioned. These are considered to be non-living beings simply because no reason can be found for them to be alive (with no RNA/DNA structure), yet they hunt for suitable environments and they infest.

A condensed and enlightening read is available regarding Hypothetical types of Biochemistry on Wikipedia®.

Sci-fi Stuff:
Viruses are just plain weird, and built up into a complex life form would probably make a pretty decent motion picture alien.

In making movies, I really hate it when the solution is that the alien attack ships are designed using the most basic Earth-programming and all we had to do was to insert a virus (Independence Day). It was also a tongue-in-cheek moment calling to mind the genius of H. G. Wells who used viruses to defeat the aliens (Martians) in his "War of the Worlds" novel. Then there was the movie "Signs," where the invading forces were purposely coming to take over a planet that, for them, had a deadly acidic atmosphere and even rained acid. Defeated by H2O?

Ridiculous.

I think the monkeys-in-charge need to dig into the sciences a bit more, as had Herbert G. Wells, Jules Vern, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, etc... David Howard and Robert Gordon found a clever zig the that zag when they had a previously fictitious spacecraft built by aliens to work exactly as the actors had shown in their canceled TV series, so he never had to explain how it worked -- it just did. That's what made "Galaxy Quest" work for me, a far better flick than either "Independence Day" or "Signs".