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great grandaddy bur oak
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this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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Science Memes
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Dendrologists: [heavy breathing]
In all seriousness, isn't it pretty unlikely that alien life could interbreed with terran life even if they also used DNA with the same bases?
We won't know until we try
Scientist 1: "How are things coming along with our test subjects?"
Scientist 2: "I don't know, it's about time to check back in with them."
Scientist 2: "Hey, Mike? How's it going?"
Mike: "Not too bad. There have been some challenges, but I think we got a few things worked out."
Scientist 2: "Oh...my. was that it's--"
Mike: "No, I don't think so, but it seems like it was mutually enjoyable, though, so write that down."
[Trilling noises in the background]
Incredibly. Even very closely related organisms can have a hard time breeding
It's extremely unlikely that their DNA has the same translation semantics into proteins.
Not unless there is a common ancestor, which is theoretically possible. But yeah, extremely unlikely.
Wow. So I went looking if people actually knew when our codon system appeared.
Turns out that there are 26 slightly different systems on Earth right now, and there are good reasons to expect random alien life to have a system that looks like ours, but is different enough to not be compatible.
Well it seems safe to say it's at least as unlikely as a terran species being able to breed with some randomly selected other terran species.
Even when possible, it's often inadvisable as we learned from the monkapotamus in Drew Carey's famous documentary: https://youtu.be/BLbJC7LeC8E