Exploring Red Rain Mysteries: Is DNA-less Life Possible?

[Monsterboy]

Is discovery science's "Unexplained files" more believable than say ,History channel's "Ancient aliens" ?
http://science.discovery.com/.../red-rain-in-sri-lanka.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala
Mod note: Inappropriate links removed

Incidents where water bodies all over the world have been turning red have been reported for some time now. While most of these occurrences, including the ‘red rain’ of Sri Lanka, have been given sufficient explanations by scientists, some isolated incidents remain a mystery. The DNA-less structures observed by them had allegedly displayed a number of remarkable characteristics, atypical of those displayed by any known micro-organisms. These properties had included the ability to replicate and multiply at extreme temperatures of up to 300 degrees Celsius, and the ability to be cultured in unconventional substrate materials.

“As far as the Kerala red rain is concerned, there is a mysterious microorganism that has defied identification so far. We have not been able to convincingly extract any DNA from them and Prof Louis has maintained that there is no DNA, but it can multiply at very high temperatures under high pressure conditions. I think there are all the signs of an alien bug! The Kerala red rain was preceded by a sonic boom that was heard, probably indicating that a fragment of a comet exploded in the atmosphere and unleashed the red cells that became incorporated in rain. I suspect the same could be true of the Sri Lankan rain, but I would like to have samples to confirm this. I should also say that reports of red rain are found throughout history all the way back to biblical times. I think this could be more evidence for cometary panspermia theory.” Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the Astrobiological Center at the Buckingham University

They said the red rain 'cells' did not have any nucleus or DNA(they could not find any) but were multiplying ,are there any known organisms that can multiply without DNA?
I don't know much about it ,but why is it so hard to break it's cell wall? it's not as if its made of unbreakable material.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The red rain was established to be caused by a local algae:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060613135746/http://www.geocities.com/iamgoddard/Sampath2001.pdf

Suggestions that it is anything else have no supporting data. There has only been one peer-reviewed study suggesting extraterrestrial origin but at most it showed that there were samples containing particles that resembled cells and no DNA was found. In other words not conclusive at all: http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0601022v1.pdf

Given studies like the one below that have found DNA and identified the spores as terrestrial (and there are many more) I'd hazard a guess that the study that didn't find DNA had poor methodology.
http://mic.sgmjournals.org/content/early/2012/11/16/mic.0.062711-0.abstract