Alternative biochemistry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alternative biochemistry is the speculative biochemistry of alien life forms that differ radically from those on Earth. It includes biochemistries that use atoms other than carbon to construct primary cellular structures and/or use solvents besides water. Theories about extraterrestrial life based on alternative biochemistries are common in science fiction.
Contents |
[edit] Atoms other than carbon
Scientists have speculated about the pros and cons of using atoms other than carbon to form the molecular structures necessary for life, but no one has proposed a theory employing such atoms to form all the molecular machinery necessary for life. Since humans are carbon-based beings and have never encountered any life that has evolved outside the earth’s environment, excluding the possibility of all other elements may be considered carbon chauvinism.
[edit] Silicon biochemistry
The most commonly proposed basis for an alternative biochemical system is the silicon atom, since silicon has many chemical properties similar to carbon and is in the same periodic table group, the carbon group.
But silicon has a number of handicaps as a carbon alternative. Because silicon atoms are much bigger, having a larger mass and atomic radius, they have difficulty forming double or triple covalent bonds, which are important for a biochemical system. Silanes, which are chemical compounds of hydrogen and silicon that are analogous to the alkane hydrocarbons, are highly reactive with water, and long-chain silanes spontaneously decompose. Molecules incorporating polymers of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms instead of direct bonds between silicon, known collectively as silicones, are much more stable. It has been suggested that silicone-based chemicals would be more stable than equivalent hydrocarbons in a sulphuric-acid-rich environment, as is found in some extraterrestrial locations.[1] In general, however, complex long-chain silicone molecules are still more unstable than their carbon counterparts.
Another obstacle is that silicon dioxide (a common ingredient of many sands), the analog of carbon dioxide, is a non-soluble solid at the temperature range where water is liquid, making it difficult for silicon to be introduced into water-based biochemical systems even if the necessary range of biochemical molecules could be constructed out of it.
Finally, of the varieties of molecules identified in the interstellar medium as of 1998, 84 are based on carbon and 8 are based on silicon.[2] Moreover, of those 8 compounds, four also include carbon within them. This suggests a greater variety of complex carbon compounds throughout the cosmos, providing less of a foundation upon which to build silicon-based biologies. The cosmic abundance of carbon to silicon is roughly 10 to 1.
The Earth, as well as other terrestrial planets, is exceptionally silicon-rich and carbon-poor. However, terrestrial life is carbon-based. Rare carbon proved to be much more successful as a life base than abundant silicon.
It is possible, however, that silicon compounds may be biologically useful under certain exotic environmental conditions, either in conjunction with or in a role less directly analogous to carbon. A simple real-world example is the silicate skeletal structure of diatoms. See biogenic silica.
A. G. Cairns-Smith has proposed that the first living organisms to exist were clay minerals - which were probably based on silicon.[3]
[edit] Nitrogen and phosphorus biochemistry
Nitrogen and phosphorus also offer possibilities as the basis for biochemical molecules. Like carbon, phosphorus can form long chain molecules on its own, which would potentially allow it to form complex macromolecules if it were not so reactive. However, in combination with nitrogen, it can form much more stable covalent bonds and create a wide range of molecules, including rings.
Earth's atmosphere is approximately 78% nitrogen, but this would probably not be of much use to a phosphorus-nitrogen (P-N) lifeform since molecular nitrogen (N2) is nearly inert and energetically expensive to "fix" due to its triple bond. (On the other hand, certain Earth plants such as legumes can fix nitrogen using symbiotic anaerobic bacteria contained in their root nodules.) A nitrogen dioxide (NO2) or ammonia (NH3) atmosphere would be more useful. Nitrogen also forms a number of oxides, such as nitrogen monoxide, dinitrogen oxide, and dinitrogen tetraoxide, and all would be present in a nitrogen-dioxide-rich atmosphere.
In a nitrogen dioxide atmosphere, P-N plant analogues could absorb nitrogen dioxide from the air and phosphorus from the ground. The nitrogen dioxide would be reduced, with analogues to sugar being produced in the process, and waste oxygen would be released into the atmosphere. Animals based on phosphorus and nitrogen would consume the plants, use atmospheric oxygen to metabolize the sugar analogues, exhaling nitrogen dioxide and depositing phosphorus, or phosphorus-rich material, as solid waste.
In an ammonia atmosphere, P-N plants would absorb ammonia from the air and phosphorus from the ground, then oxidize the ammonia to produce P-N sugars and release hydrogen waste. P-N animals are now the reducers, breathing in hydrogen and converting the P-N sugars to ammonia and phosphorus. This is the opposite pattern of oxidation and reduction from a nitrogen dioxide world, and indeed from the known biochemistry of Earth. It would be analogous to Earth's atmospheric carbon supply being in the form of methane instead of carbon dioxide.
Debate continues, as several aspects of a phosphorus-nitrogen cycle biology would be energy deficient. Also, nitrogen and phosphorus are unlikely to occur in the ratios and quantity required in the real universe. Carbon, being preferentially formed during nuclear fusion, is more abundant and is more likely to end up in a preferred location.
[edit] Other exotic biochemical elements
Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, while poisonous for most Earth life, is incorporated into the biochemistry of some organisms.[4] Some marine algae incorporate arsenic into complex organic molecules such as arsenosugars and arsenobetaines. Fungi and bacteria can produce volatile methylated arsenic compounds. Both arsenate reduction and arsenite oxidation have been observed in microbes.[5] Additionally, some prokaryotes can use arsenate as a terminal electron acceptor during anaerobic growth and some can utilize arsenite as an electron donor to generate energy.
Chlorine is sometimes proposed as a biological alternative to oxygen, either in carbon-based biologies or hypothetical non-carbon-based ones. But chlorine is much less abundant than oxygen in the universe, and so it is unlikely that a planet will be able to form which has a large enough concentration of chlorine available on its surface to form the basis of a biochemistry. Chlorine will instead likely be bound up in the form of salts and other inert compounds.
Sulfur is also able to form long-chain molecules, but suffers from the same high reactivity problems that phosphorus and silanes do. The biological use of sulfur as an alternative to carbon is purely theoretical, but strains of sulfur-reducing bacteria have been discovered in exotic locations on earth, and also not so exotic locations, such as aging water systems.[6] These bacteria can utilize elemental sulfur instead of oxygen, reducing sulfur to hydrogen sulfide. Examples of this type of metabolism are green sulfur bacteria and purple sulfur bacteria.
[edit] Non-water solvents
In addition to carbon compounds, all currently known terrestrial life also requires water as a solvent. It is sometimes assumed that water is the only suitable chemical to fill this role. Some of the properties of water that are important for life processes include a large temperature range over which it is liquid, a high heat capacity useful for temperature regulation, a large heat of vaporization, and the ability to dissolve a wide variety of compounds. There are other chemicals with similar properties that have sometimes been proposed as alternatives.
[edit] Ammonia
Ammonia is perhaps the most commonly proposed alternative. Numerous chemical reactions are possible in an ammonia solution, and liquid ammonia has some chemical similarities with water. Ammonia can dissolve most organic molecules at least as well as water does, and in addition it is capable of dissolving many elemental metals. Given this set of chemical properties it has been theorized that ammonia-based life forms might be possible.
However, ammonia does have some problems as a basis for life. The hydrogen bonds between ammonia molecules are weaker than those in water, causing ammonia's heat of vaporization to be half that of water, its surface tension to be three times smaller, and reducing its ability to concentrate non-polar molecules through a hydrophobic effect. For these reasons, science questions how well ammonia could hold prebiotic molecules together in order to allow the emergence of a self-reproducing system. Ammonia is also combustible and oxidizable and could not exist sustainably in a biosphere that oxidizes it. It would, however, be stable in a reducing environment.
A biosphere based on ammonia would likely exist at temperatures or air pressures that are extremely unusual for terrestrial life. Terrestrial life usually exists within the melting point and boiling point of water at normal pressure, between 0°C (273 K) and 100°C (373 K); at normal pressure ammonia's melting and boiling points are between −78°C (195 K) and −33°C (240 K). Such extremely cooled temperatures create problems, as they slow biochemical reactions tremendously and may cause biochemical precipitation out of solution due to high melting points. Ammonia could be a liquid at normal temperatures, but at much higher pressures; for example, at 60 atm, ammonia melts at −77°C (196 K) and boils at 98°C (371 K).
Ammonia and ammonia-water mixtures remain liquid at temperatures far below the freezing point of pure water, so such biochemistries might be well suited to planets and moons orbiting outside the water-based "habitability zone". Such conditions could exist, for example, under the surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan.[7]
[edit] Hydrogen fluoride
Hydrogen fluoride like water is a polar molecule, and due to its polarity it can dissolve many ionic compounds. Its melting point is -84°C and its boiling point is 19.54°C; the difference between the two is more than 100°C. HF also hydrogen bonds with its neighbor molecules as do water and ammonia. All of these things make HF a candidate to host life on other planets.
Not much research has been done on liquid HF in regards to its ability to dissolve and react with non-polar molecules. It is possible that the biota in an HF ocean could use the fluorine as an electron acceptor to photosynthesize energy.
[edit] Other solvents
Other solvents sometimes proposed include methanol, hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen chloride. The latter two suffer from a relatively low cosmic abundance of sulfur and chlorine, which tend to be bound up in solid minerals. A mixture of hydrocarbons, such as the methane/ethane seas once believed to exist on the surface of Titan, could act as a solvent over a wide range of temperatures but would lack polarity. Isaac Asimov, the biochemist and science fiction writer, suggested that poly-lipids could form a substitute for proteins in a non-polar solvent such as methane or liquid hydrogen.[8] Other solvents such as formamide might also be suitable as a solvent that would support alternative biochemistry.
[edit] In fiction
In the realm of science fiction there have occasionally been forms of life proposed that, while often highly speculative and unsupported by rigorous theoretical examination, are nevertheless interesting and in some cases even somewhat plausible.
[edit] Novels, Short Stories and Comics
An example of silicon based life forms takes place in the novel Sentenced to Prism by Alan Dean Foster in which the protagonist Evan Orgell finds himself trapped on a planet whose entire ecosystem is mostly silicon-based.
Perhaps the most extreme example in science fiction is James White's Sector General: a series of novels and short stories about multienvironment hospital for the strangest lifeforms imaginable, some of them breathing methane, chlorine, water and sometimes also oxygen. Some of the species metabolise directly hard radiation and their environment doesn't differ much from the atmosphere of a star, while others live in near absolute zero temperatures. All of the life forms are classified according to their metabolism, internal and external features, and more extreme abilities (telepathy, empathy, hive mind, etc) with four letter codes. Humans from Earth share the DBDG specification with small furry beings called Nidians.
One of the major sentient species in Terry Pratchett's Discworld universe are Trolls. They are mineral-based and this has various interesting effects on their physiology and culture. Trolls eat rocks, which suggests that their biochemistry is similar to that of plants. A heterotrophic silicon-based lifeform could no more eat rock than a carbon-based lifeform could eat coal. However, if they were photosynthetic, like plants, they could utilise silicon dioxide, which makes up the vast majority of most rock, in the same manner that plants utilise carbon dioxide, to create the silicon/glucose analogue from which they could derive nourishment. Given the humourous nature of the series and the physics of Pratchett's Discworld universe, the Trolls may even receive their energy from ambient magic rather than sunlight.[citation needed]
Pratchett has also written the science fiction novel The Dark Side of the Sun which features a range of extraordinary lifeforms, including a telepathic body of water, creatures called "Sundogs", which are capable of interstellar travel from birth, and a sentient planet: effectively a giant silicon-based computer.
Fred Hoyle's classic novel The Black Cloud features a life form consisting of a vast cloud of interstellar dust, the individual particles of which interact via electromagnetic signalling analogous to how the individual cells of multicellular terrestrial life interact. Outside of science-fiction, life in interstellar dust has been proposed as part of the panspermia hypothesis. The low temperatures and densities of interstellar clouds would seem to imply that life processes would operate much more slowly there than on Earth.
Similarly, Arthur C. Clarke's "Crusade" revolves around a planetwide lifeform based on silicon and superfluid helium located in deep intergalactic space, processing its thoughts very slowly by human standards, that sends probes to look for similar life in nearby galaxies. It concludes that it needs to make planets more habitable for similar lifeforms, and sends out other probes to foment supernovae in order to do so. Clarke implies that this is what accounts for most supernovae having occurred in the same region of space and warns that the effort will eventually reach Earth.[citation needed]
Robert L. Forward's Camelot 30K describes an ecosystem existing on the surface of Kuiper belt objects that is based on a fluorocarbon chemistry with OF2 as the principal solvent instead of H2O. The organisms in this ecology keep themselves warm by secreting a pellet of uranium-235 inside themselves and then moderating its nuclear fission using a boron-rich carapace around it. Kuiper belt objects are known to be rich in organic compounds such as tholins, so some form of life existing on their surfaces is not entirely implausible–though perhaps not going so far as to develop natural internal nuclear reactors, as have Forward's. Fluorine is also of low cosmic abundance, so its use in this manner is unlikely.[citation needed]
In Forward's Rocheworld series, a relatively Earth-like biochemistry is proposed that uses a mixture of water and ammonia as its solvent. In Dragon's Egg and Starquake, Forward proposes life on the surface of a neutron star utilizing "nuclear chemistry" in the degenerate matter crust. Since such life utilised strong nuclear forces instead of electromagnetic interactions, it was posited that life might function millions of times faster than typical on Earth.
Gregory Benford and David Brin's Heart of the Comet features a comet with a conventional carbon-and-water-based ecosystem that becomes active near the perihelion when the Sun warms it. Brin's own novel Sundiver is an example of science fiction proposing a form of life existing within the plasma atmosphere of a star using complex self-sustaining magnetic fields. Similar sorts of plasmoid life have sometimes been proposed to exist in other places, such as planetary ionospheres or interstellar space, but usually only by fringe theorists (see ball lightning for some additional discussion).[citation needed] Gregory Benford had a form of plasma-based life exist in the accretion disk of a primordial black hole in his novel Eater.
The suggestion that life could even occur within the plasma of a star has been picked up by other science fiction writers, as in David Brin's Uplift Saga. Any place in which reactions occur–even an incredible environment as a star–presents a possible medium for some chain of events that could produce a system able to replicate itself.[citation needed]
Stephen Baxter has imagined perhaps some of the most unusual exotic lifeforms in his Xeelee series of novels and stories, including supersymmetric photino-based life that congregate in the gravity wells of stars, and the Qax, who thrive in any form of convection cells, from swamp gas to the atmospheres of gas giants.
In his novel Diaspora, Greg Egan posits the existence of entire virtual universes implemented on Turing Machines encoded by Wang Tiles in gargantuan polysaccharide 'carpets.' The sentient ocean that covers much of the surface of Solaris in Stanislaw Lem's eponymous novel also seems, from much of the fictional research quoted and discussed in the book, to based on some element other than carbon.
In her novel Brain Plague, Joan Slonczewski describes a species of intelligent microrganisms with arsenic based chemistries that live symbiotically with human hosts.
Sergeant Schlock is one of the lead characters in the webcomic Schlock Mercenary. His species, Carbosilicate Amorphs, evolved from self-repairing distributed data storage devices, and as such, redundantly distribute their 'brain' throughout their body. They are highly resistant to Hard Vacuum, explosive decompression, projectile weapons, chemical-based explosives, and dismemberment. Their only specialty organ is their eyes, which they harvest as fruit from the Ghanj-Rho eye-tree on their home planet. While the Amorphs have the ability to move fast, quietly,[9] and sprout apendages at will, they excel at 'closer-then-melee-range combat, primarily "meme-toxins" against other Amorphs.
A more humorous example comes from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the Hooloovoo are a hyperintelligent shade of the colour blue.
[edit] Star Trek
A well-known example of a non–carbon-based lifeform in science fiction is the Horta in the original Star Trek episode "The Devil in the Dark". A highly intelligent silicon-based creature made almost entirely of pure rock, it tunnels through rock as easily as humans move through air. The entire species dies out every 50,000 years save for one who tends all the eggs, which take the form of silicon nodules scattered throughout the caverns and tunnels of its home planet, Janus VI. The inadvertent destruction of many of these eggs by a human mining colony led the mother Horta to respond by murdering the colonists and sabotaging their equipment; it was only through a Vulcan mind meld that the race's benevolence and intelligence were discovered and peaceful relations established.
Star Trek would later offer other corporeal lifeforms with an alternative biochemistry. The Tholians of "The Tholian Web" are depicted and described, in that episode and later in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "In a Mirror, Darkly" as being primarily of mineral-based composition and thriving only in superheated conditions. Another episode from TOS's third season, "The Savage Curtain", depicted another rock creature called an Excalbian, which is believed in fanon to also have been silicon-based.[citation needed]
Later on, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Crystalline Entity appeared in two episodes. This was an enormous spacefaring crystal lattice that had taken thousands of lives in its quest for energy. It may have been unaware of this, however, but it was destroyed before communications could be established at a level sufficient to ascertain it. Intelligent crystals that formed a "microbrain" and described the humans they encountered as "ugly bags of mostly water", were also found in the TNG episode "Home Soil".
"The Disease", an episode of Star Trek:Voyager featured some artificially-engineered silicon-based parasites, and an Enterprise episode, "Observer Effect", also presented a lethal silicon-based virus. In another Voyager episode, "Hope and Fear", a xenon-based lifeform was mentioned. In the Enterprise episode The Communicator, an alien species is encountered whose blood chemistry, while not explicitly stated, is sufficiently different to terrestrial organisms that it is not red and iron is toxic to it.
[edit] Star Wars
In the Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back, two lifeforms were encountered by the characters that were non-carbon based entities. Although details of their physiology were not mentioned on screen, the Space slug, (a giant worm-like creature that lived on asteroids in the freezing vacuum of space), and the Mynock, (pesky bat-like vermin that would attach themselves to spaceship hulls and chew through power conduits to fed off the raw energy), are said to be silicon-based organisms in expanded universe sources.[citation needed]
A purely expanded universe creature is the Spice Spider of Kessel is a silicon-based creature that spun crystalline webs that miners harvested as Glitterstim Spice, an illegal psychoactive narcotic. The spider used the webs to catch Bogies, tiny energy creatures that it fed upon.[citation needed]
[edit] Other film and television
In "Firewalker", a second-season episode of The X-Files, a silicon-based plant that infects humans parasitically through its spores is discovered living deep in a volcano.
A key plot point in the comedy Evolution involves nitrogen-based life forms, and using selenium-based shampoo to poison them (with the bonus of a product placement for Head & Shoulders).
[edit] Computer and video games
In the Command & Conquer real-time strategy games, both the gameplay and storyline revolve heavily around a non-carbon based, harvestable and mutagenic alien plant-like lifeform named "Tiberium", which was introduced on Earth through a meteorite impact.
In the Halo video game series, a race of Covenant aliens named "Grunts" by humans require a breathing apparatus while fighting the humans in an Earth-like atmosphere. According to the novelizations of the video game, the Grunts' apparatus allows them to breathe the methane they need to survive.
In the Master of Orion series of space strategy games, there exists an extraterrestrial race called Silicoids, whose appearance (and presumably composition) is similar to crystalline mineral structures. The game posits that this grants them immunity to the effects of hostile environments and pollution, at the expense of impeding their reproductive rate and their ability to interact with other intelligent species.
In Metroid Prime: Hunters, Spire is a rock-like, silicon based alien. He is the last Diamont (presumably a play on the word diamond, which is composed of carbon).
In the Star Control series, the Chenjesu, are intelligent, peaceful silicon-based lifeforms that were the backbone of the Alliance of Free Stars.
In the game of Xenosaga, artificial life forms known as Raelians have been created using silicon-based chemistry. They resemble humans in every aspect, except they are considered to be lower than humans on the social ladder.
[edit] See also
- Astrobiology
- Carbon-based life
- Extraterrestrial life
- Non-cellular life
- Alternative biology
- Iron-sulfur world theory
[edit] References
- ^ Gillette, Stephen. World-Building. Writer's Digest Books.
- ^ Lazio, Joseph. F.10 Why do we assume that other beings must be based on carbon? Why couldn't organisms be based on other substances?. [sci.astro] ET Life (Astronomy Frequently Asked Questions). Retrieved on July 21, 2006.
- ^ Cairns-Smith, A. Graham (1985). Seven Clues to the Origin of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-27522-9.
- ^ http://umbbd.msi.umn.edu/periodic/elements/as.html
- ^ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11722908&dopt=Abstract
- ^ http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/water/dwg/sulferb.pdf
- ^ [1] As of 2006-03-02, the page appears unavailable.
- ^ Aliens. Atomic Rockets. Retrieved on March 3, 2006.
- ^ http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20060905.html
- W. Bains (2004). "Many Chemistries Could Be Used to Build Living Systems". Astrobiology 4: 137-167.
[edit] External links
|
|
||
|---|---|---|
|
Main Areas of Study
|
Sightings - Exopolitics - Exotheology Science in ufology - Alleged extraterrestrials |
 Articles in each group are sorted by length |
|
Purported Crashes
|
Roswell - Rendlesham Forest - Dropa Shag Harbour - Kecksburg - Height 611 |
|
|
Involvement
|
Australian - Researchers - Coast to Coast AM Organizations - BBS Radio - NUFOC |
|
|
Agreements
|
Space Preservation Act Space Preservation Treaty |
|
