NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035, USA.
Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2010 Apr;2(4):a003509. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a003509. Epub 2010 Mar 3.
Evidence of past liquid water on the surface of Mars suggests that this world once had habitable conditions and leads to the question of life. If there was life on Mars, it would be interesting to determine if it represented a separate origin from life on Earth. To determine the biochemistry and genetics of life on Mars requires that we have access to an organism or the biological remains of one-possibly preserved in ancient permafrost. A way to determine if organic material found on Mars represents the remains of an alien biological system could be based on the observation that biological systems select certain organic molecules over others that are chemically similar (e.g., chirality in amino acids).
火星表面存在液态水的证据表明,这个星球曾经拥有适宜居住的条件,这引发了关于生命存在的问题。如果火星上曾经存在生命,那么确定它是否与地球上的生命起源不同将是一件有趣的事情。要确定火星上生命的生物化学和遗传学,我们需要获得一个生物体或其生物遗骸——可能保存在古代永冻土中。一种确定火星上发现的有机物质是否代表外星生物系统遗骸的方法可能基于这样一种观察结果,即生物系统会选择某些有机分子而不是其他化学性质相似的分子(例如,氨基酸中的手性)。