 hen
the "Martian Microbe"
sequence of nucleotides
first arrived from Sojourner Rover II, geneticists on
the Pathfinder Mission
were astonished. The statistical distribution was
sharply distinguished
from DNA strands commonly found on the planet Earth,
thus appearing to
rule out contamination from terrestrial sources.
Was this not evidence
of a life form peculiar to Mars? |
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The microminiature, fluorescent DNA analyzer aboard SRII automatically sequences samples and encodes them into 'dibits' for relayed transmission to earth as follows:
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| Here are the first 100 nucleotides in
the sequence that
caused all the excitement:
AAGGCAGAACGAATAGACCAACTTG GCCAGGAACCAAGAGAGAGGGGCCG AATGGTATAAACATTGACGTCGTGGC Geneticists noticed the discrepancies
right away...
...the relative frequencies of Adonine and Cytosine appear to be in the Martian Microbe from those which are most commonly observed in Earth-Life sequences. |
