Once again, Craig Venter is looking for new challenges. The latest may be Martian DNA.
I have thought for some time that life on Mars is going to consist of microorganisms and be buried several feet below the surface of the planet soil. I have even blogged about it before.
Now, there is a possibility of a nucleotide sequencer that could go to Mars on the next probe in 2018.
In what could become a race for the first extraterrestrial genome, researcher J. Craig Venter said Tuesday that his Maryland academic institute and his company, Synthetic Genomics, would develop a machine capable of sequencing and beaming back DNA data from the planet.
Separately, Jonathan Rothberg, founder of Ion Torrent, a DNA sequencing company, is collaborating on an effort to equip his company’s “Personal Genome Machine” for a similar task.
“We want to make sure an Ion Torrent goes to Mars,” Rothberg told Technology Review.
Although neither team yet has a berth on a Mars rocket, their plans reflect the belief that the simplest way to prove there is life on Mars is to send a DNA sequencing machine.
“There will be DNA life forms there,” Venter predicted Tuesday in New York, where he was speaking at the Wired Health Conference.
Venter said researchers working with him have already begun tests at a Mars-like site in the Mojave Desert. Their goal, he said, is to demonstrate a machine capable of autonomously isolating microbes from soil, sequencing their DNA, and then transmitting the information to a remote computer, as would be required on an unmanned Mars mission. Heather Kowalski, a spokeswoman for Venter, confirmed the existence of the project but said the prototype system was “not yet 100 percent robotic.”
Doing this on Mars would avoid the problem of contamination by earth organisms. New life forms that don’t use DNA might be a problem but most people who have thought about this believe that DNA is the genetic material of all life forms. Of course, protein, which may have been the original genetic material on earth could also be the Martian equivalent.
We are starting to see commercial spacecraft develop and one was used to reach the international space station recently. A Mars mission is another order of complexity but by 2018, it may be an option.
At the moment our entire space future seems to hang on Egon Musk’s SpaceX – and it looks very promising. he is redefining he economics opf space travel – even planning on using reusable rockets.
http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Visionary-Launchers-Employees.html
}}}} New life forms that don’t use DNA might be a problem but most people who have thought about this believe that DNA is the genetic material of all life forms.
IIRC, the argument is that, not only is DNA an incredibly robust and powerful molecule, and it one of the first such self-organizing, self-replicating molecules that can or will be produced, it also apparently tends to “eat” the competition, to break down its molecules to build more of itself.
There may be a better, more effective molecule out there that does as well at synthesizing more of itself than DNA, but we haven’t encountered it, yet.