The creation of self-replicating inorganic structure would be a tremendous achievement. While I doubt that there is life in the universe based on metal oxide crystals — or at least the metals Dr. Cronin is using — the proof of concept would have very real applications to piecing together how life could have initially arose.

(My rational against metal oxide crystal life arising (unless one postulates an ‘intelligent creator’ such as Dr. Cronin) is that metals such as Molybdenum, Tellurium and Vanadium are orders of magnitude rarer in the Universe than elements like H, O, C and N. Just a probability thing)

Since DNA has the same shape regardless of what code it carries, it could theoretically mutate by quantum fluctuation. It would be interesting to see if this actually happens, and if so how important it is.