Tyrosine Form
Jun/110
Eating Alien life forms?
If we and when we find extraterrestrial (non earth) life, and if we had the ability to design a spacecraft to visit the planet haboring it. Would we be able to eat the animal or plant life that inhabits this planet? This is for the hard core biology answerers. I'm thinking the answer would be no, because the amino acids used for life may not be the same as the ones terrestrial life uses. Is there a reason we use Tryptophan and tyrosine rather than some other amino acid?
The main question is whether we will be able to extract any nutritional value from eating these indigenous organisms. Of course, the first hurdle is to ensure that we don't poison or otherwise harm ourselves by attempting to eat them.
There are three primary categories of digestible compounds in our foods -- proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. In order to absorb the food into our bloodstream through the intestine walls, we must break down the proteins into their constituent amino acids, the fats into their constituent fatty acids, and the carbohydrates into their constituent simple sugars. So in analyzing a potential food source on an alien planet, the following questions arise:
1. Does the potential "food" contain proteins, fats, and/or carbohydrates? If all the compounds are completely alien to our biology, then we won't be able to make use of them.
2. If the food does contain proteins, fats, and/or carbohydrates, then are the amino acids, fatty acids, and simple sugars the same as on earth? If not, then we won't be able to make use of them for food.
3. If the food compounds are indeed composed of linked amino acids, fatty acids, and/or simple sugars, then are they linked in such a way that our digestive enzymes can break them apart? If the linkages between the basic building blocks differ from that of earth organisms, then we might not be able to digest the food to release the valuable nutrients.
I think that the answer may differ somewhat from planet to planet, assuming that we found alien life on several different planets. Perhaps on planet A we cannot find any usable proteins, but we do find some usable fats and carbohydrates. On planet A we must rely primarily on foods that come from earth plants and animals, but we do use some local foods to add interest to the diet.
On planet B we are lucky enough to find foods that provide proteins, fats, and carbohydrates -- but not all of our essential amino acids are represented in the proteins. So even on planet B we can't rely entire on the native foods, but have to include some proteins from earth organisms in our diet.
Beyond the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, there are also some essential vitamins that we must consume -- which is another reason that we probably could not survive indefinitely by eating only the native organisms on the alien planet. There is a fairly high probability that we would be missing one or more of these essential vitamins in our diet.
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