What this is really telling us is that life is a unified process. It's not just a group of DNA bases, but it's also the physical environment in which they exist. Later on, as life became more evolved, there were other ways to achieve genetic stability. But at first, it simply may not have been possible without water.

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In modern biological forms, it's not essential that water be present for DNA to have stability. There are other mechanisms that now exist in biology to accomplish that, and complex biological processes are possible that don't always require water. But in its most basic form, we now know that DNA bases are not stable and they are highly vulnerable to UV-induced damage.

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But just since last summer this has been a key point of discussion at several conferences and caused quite an excitement, as people see the data. Among other things, it helps to explain how water, or something else serving the same role, could have helped lead to the evolution of life.

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