Story Bone

There's a number of stories about colonization of other worlds by sending DNA and the molecules that sustain and make up life to the alien world. But to do that requires a lot of machinery that can reconstruct life (as we know it) and maintain that life on a potentially hostile world (well of course it's a hostile world, that's where the main conflict comes in). There are also several stories running along the lines of "if we meet aliens, our biology will more than likely not be compatible to either coexistence or to using alien life for food." And then there is the concept of panspermia, where life (the unique self-replicating chemistry) might have formed elsewhere and come raining in on planets from comets or meteorites.

Okay, how about this one. Colonizing another world through the use of macro-viruses that would suborn the existing biosphere while using it as the mechanism for reconstruction and reproduction. Think of it as a combination body-snatching through parasitology or more likely symbiosis.

Most life is going to be carbon based (carbon is hella flexible and while silicon has similar electrical properties, it's damn heavy and doesn't exist - as far as well know - in all the states that carbon can), so if a planet had any life it mostly likely would be carbon based. That narrows the variability if cellular structures and creates likely surface protein combinations that would allow a virus to latch on. Can consciousness be encoded in DNA (or more likely RNA, the real workhorse of cellular life)? Could you potentially create a hidden consciousness within another life form. Or, if you want to go the "all life is in conflict" route, could you alter an existing consciousness to a preprogramed state? Would it be possible to direct planetary evolution (through the DNA expression) to recreate a life form that could hold the alien intelligence (and just how big a package of DNA/RNA would you need for that)? Could you convert an existing (alien) cell into a stem cell and generate a whole being that way (there's a lot of hurdles to get over with that one)?

Now let's say all that is possible. Let's say an alien intelligence design the macro-virus to create a symbiotic intelligence and let's say it would infect us humans. Would we know? Could the other consciousness be so detached from our own that it could live and function within us without our knowledge?

Personally I would hate to write this as we are the alien life form and we're still evolving because that plays into the concept of "evolving higher." That's a concept I personally find as bullshit and stems from the human attempt to say "we are special!"