Reminds me of the risk from mirror organisms. Basically you create cyanobacteria using right handed amino acids instead of left handed ones, and it outcompetes everything else because nothing can predate it (it’s indigestible to normal organisms).
Right. It’s the same idea. The one I gave above is essentially that https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/34/1/e7/2401668 there are other amino acids nature didn’t have a choice between. Probably a photosynthetic bacteria that was ‘designed’, by accident or evolution, from a larger set of amino acids or on a different world would have an efficiency or defense advantage. So slowly over time with each generation, a small advantage means slightly more of the algae in an ever expanding bloom is this alien life.
I think the reason this doesn’t normally happen is within the possibility space of earth life, there are rarely truly dominant advantages, so eventually this bloom would hit a limit of the biomes it’s optimized for, or other creatures would evolve to eat it, or it would have it’s advantages copied by gene transfers.
But in theory an alien organism could have an efficiency advantage in all conditions that earth has, and obviously it can’t be eaten and it’s genes are not intercompatible with earth life.
Reminds me of the risk from mirror organisms. Basically you create cyanobacteria using right handed amino acids instead of left handed ones, and it outcompetes everything else because nothing can predate it (it’s indigestible to normal organisms).
Right. It’s the same idea. The one I gave above is essentially that https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/34/1/e7/2401668 there are other amino acids nature didn’t have a choice between. Probably a photosynthetic bacteria that was ‘designed’, by accident or evolution, from a larger set of amino acids or on a different world would have an efficiency or defense advantage. So slowly over time with each generation, a small advantage means slightly more of the algae in an ever expanding bloom is this alien life.
I think the reason this doesn’t normally happen is within the possibility space of earth life, there are rarely truly dominant advantages, so eventually this bloom would hit a limit of the biomes it’s optimized for, or other creatures would evolve to eat it, or it would have it’s advantages copied by gene transfers.
But in theory an alien organism could have an efficiency advantage in all conditions that earth has, and obviously it can’t be eaten and it’s genes are not intercompatible with earth life.