Comment on 'Stereo-Specific Glucose Consumption May Be Used to Distinguish Between Chemical and Biological Reactivity on Mars: A Preliminary Test on Earth'

摘要

Sun, H.J., Saccomanno, V, Hedlund, B., and McKay, C.P. ("Stereo-Specific Glucose Consumption May Be Used to Distinguish between Chemical and Biological Reactivity on Mars: A Preliminary Test on Earth") is an important and timely paper addressing the recently revived interest in the possibility of extant life on Mars. The paper specifically and succinctly proposes to resolve the 33-year aura of doubt surrounding the Viking Labeled Release (LR) life-detection experiment (Levin and Straat, 1976). Reporting on experiments performed on all three domains of life, archaea, bacteria and eukaryotes, Sun et al. convincingly show that chirality preference distinguishes metabolic consumption of substrates from purely physico-chemical reactions in that the latter have no chirality preference.