G'Day Alex;
I had decided to let this thread lay for a while … I'm glad you've found it interesting .. there are certainly a lot of aspects which I was not aware of, and have subsequently found out, since leaving this thread. (I may add these when I get the chance).
For the record,
post #22 on this thread is Bert's reference to what you were mentioning.
I find it quite amazing how many life supporting mechanisms have been identified by following the 'exo-life exists' line of speculation. I'm sure there are many others, and I can certainly visualise the relevance of this one (as far as cell membrane forming, and dissociation, mechanism analogies go).
The "water saturation in Mars' atmosphere" article also chases another possible mechanism which could be used to infer the existence of past exo-life. In this one however, I find there are many questionable usages of "if confirmed", "would have consequences", "is known", etc .. so I'll take this as more attempts at applying verifiability to a logical proposition (for the positive exo-life argument), than actual evidence in direct support of the 'exo-life-on-Mars-in-the-past' proposition. (This being because we have no idea as to whether water
causes the emergence of life, or whether it is merely
correlated with the only instance of life we know of).
Cheers