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JOURNAL ARTICLE
Stephanie Colón-Santos, Alberto Vázquez-Salazar, Alyssa Adams, José Alberto Campillo-Balderas, Ricardo Hernández-Morales, Rodrigo Jácome, Israel Muñoz-Velasco, Laura E Rodriguez, Micah J Schaible, George A Schaible, Nadia Szeinbaum, Jennifer L Thweatt, Gareth Trubl
The question "What is life?" has existed since the beginning of recorded history. However, the scientific and philosophical contexts of this question have changed and been refined as advancements in technology have revealed both fine details and broad connections in the network of life on Earth. Understanding the framework of the question "What is life?" is central to formulating other questions such as "Where else could life be?" and "How do we search for life elsewhere?" While many of these questions are addressed throughout the Astrobiology Primer 3...
March 2024: Astrobiology
#22
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Natalie Grefenstette, Luoth Chou, Stephanie Colón-Santos, Theresa M Fisher, Veronica Mierzejewski, Ceren Nural, Pritvik Sinhadc, Monica Vidaurri, Lena Vincent, Maggie Meiqi Weng
While Earth contains the only known example of life in the universe, it is possible that life elsewhere is fundamentally different from what we are familiar with. There is an increased recognition in the astrobiology community that the search for life should steer away from terran-specific biosignatures to those that are more inclusive to all life-forms. To start exploring the space of possibilities that life could occupy, we can try to dissociate life from the chemistry that composes it on Earth by envisioning how different life elsewhere could be in composition, lifestyle, medium, and form, and by exploring how the general principles that govern living systems on Earth might be found in different forms and environments across the Solar System...
March 2024: Astrobiology
#23
JOURNAL ARTICLE
G Ozan Bozdag, Nadia Szeinbaum, Peter L Conlin, Kimberly Chen, Santiago Mestre Fos, Amanda Garcia, Petar I Penev, George A Schaible, Gareth Trubl
All organisms living on Earth descended from a single, common ancestral population of cells, known as LUCA-the last universal common ancestor. Since its emergence, the diversity and complexity of life have increased dramatically. This chapter focuses on four key biological innovations throughout Earth's history that had a significant impact on the expansion of phylogenetic diversity, organismal complexity, and ecospace habitation. First is the emergence of the last universal common ancestor, LUCA, which laid the foundation for all life-forms on Earth...
March 2024: Astrobiology
#24
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Laura E Rodriguez, Thiago Altair, Ninos Y Hermis, Tony Z Jia, Tyler P Roche, Luke H Steller, Jessica M Weber
Within the first billion years of Earth's history, the planet transformed from a hot, barren, and inhospitable landscape to an environment conducive to the emergence and persistence of life. This chapter will review the state of knowledge concerning early Earth's (Hadean/Eoarchean) geochemical environment, including the origin and composition of the planet's moon, crust, oceans, atmosphere, and organic content. It will also discuss abiotic geochemical cycling of the CHONPS elements and how these species could have been converted to biologically relevant building blocks, polymers, and chemical networks...
March 2024: Astrobiology
#25
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Micah J Schaible, Nadia Szeinbaum, G Ozan Bozdag, Luoth Chou, Natalie Grefenstette, Stephanie Colón-Santos, Laura E Rodriguez, M J Styczinski, Jennifer L Thweatt, Zoe R Todd, Alberto Vázquez-Salazar, Alyssa Adams, M N Araújo, Thiago Altair, Schuyler Borges, Dana Burton, José Alberto Campillo-Balderas, Eryn M Cangi, Tristan Caro, Enrico Catalano, Kimberly Chen, Peter L Conlin, Z S Cooper, Theresa M Fisher, Santiago Mestre Fos, Amanda Garcia, D M Glaser, Chester E Harman, Ninos Y Hermis, M Hooks, K Johnson-Finn, Owen Lehmer, Ricardo Hernández-Morales, Kynan H G Hughson, Rodrigo Jácome, Tony Z Jia, Jeffrey J Marlow, Jordan McKaig, Veronica Mierzejewski, Israel Muñoz-Velasco, Ceren Nural, Gina C Oliver, Petar I Penev, Chinmayee Govinda Raj, Tyler P Roche, Mary C Sabuda, George A Schaible, Serhat Sevgen, Pritvik Sinhadc, Luke H Steller, Kamil Stelmach, J Tarnas, Frank Tavares, Gareth Trubl, Monica Vidaurri, Lena Vincent, Jessica M Weber, Maggie Meiqi Weng, Regina L Wilpiszeki, Amber Young
The Astrobiology Primer 3.0 (ABP3.0) is a concise introduction to the field of astrobiology for students and others who are new to the field of astrobiology. It provides an entry into the broader materials in this supplementary issue of Astrobiology and an overview of the investigations and driving hypotheses that make up this interdisciplinary field. The content of this chapter was adapted from the other 10 articles in this supplementary issue and thus represents the contribution of all the authors who worked on these introductory articles...
March 2024: Astrobiology
#26
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Aaron Pital, Megan Bromley, Max Dorn, Jungkyu Kim, Amanda Stockton
Most of the chemical and physical interactions of interest to the astrobiology community are influenced by the mineralogy of the systems under consideration. Often, this mineralogy occurs in sediment or sediment-like aqueous microenvironments in which the early minerals differ dramatically from the mature version that results from a long diagenesis, which are tied to complex interactions of pH, redox state, concentration, and temperature. This interconnectedness is difficult to reproduce in a laboratory setting yet is essential to understanding how the physical and chemical demands of living systems alter and are altered by their geological context...
February 2024: Astrobiology
#27
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Laura Clodoré, Frédéric Foucher, Keyron Hickman-Lewis, Stéphanie Sorieul, Jean Jouve, Matthieu Réfrégiers, Guillaume Collet, Stéphane Petoud, Bernard Gratuze, Frances Westall
The NASA Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is actively exploring Jezero crater to conduct analyses on igneous and sedimentary rock targets from outcrops located on the crater floor (Máaz and Séítah formations) and from the delta deposits, respectively. The rock samples collected during this mission will be recovered during the Mars Sample Return mission, which plans to bring samples back to Earth in the 2030s to conduct in-depth studies using sophisticated laboratory instrumentation. Some of these samples may contain traces of ancient martian life that may be particularly difficult to detect and characterize because of their morphological simplicity and subtle biogeochemical expressions...
February 2024: Astrobiology
#28
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Shawn R Wolfe, Barbara Lafuente, Richard M Keller, Angela M Detweiler, Thomas F Bristow, Mary N Parenteau, Kevin Boydstun, Christopher E Dateo, David J Des Marais, Linda L Jahnke, Sara Rojo, Nathan Stone, Mark Vorobets
As scientific investigations increasingly adopt Open Science practices, reuse of data becomes paramount. However, despite decades of progress in internet search tools, finding relevant astrobiology datasets for an envisioned investigation remains challenging due to the precise and atypical needs of the astrobiology researcher. In response, we have developed the Astrobiology Resource Metadata Standard (ARMS), a metadata standard designed to uniformly describe astrobiology "resources," that is, virtually any product of astrobiology research...
February 2024: Astrobiology
#29
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Marc Neveu, Richard Quinn, Laura M Barge, Kathleen L Craft, Christopher R German, Stephanie Getty, Christopher Glein, Macarena Parra, Aaron S Burton, Francesca Cary, Andrea Corpolongo, Lucas Fifer, Andrew Gangidine, Diana Gentry, Christos D Georgiou, Zaid Haddadin, Craig Herbold, Aila Inaba, Seán F Jordan, Hemani Kalucha, Pavel Klier, Kas Knicely, An Y Li, Patrick McNally, Maëva Millan, Neveda Naz, Chinmayee Govinda Raj, Peter Schroedl, Jennifer Timm, Ziming Yang
The 2-week, virtual Future of the Search for Life science and engineering workshop brought together more than 100 scientists, engineers, and technologists in March and April 2022 to provide their expert opinion on the interconnections between life-detection science and technology. Participants identified the advances in measurement and sampling technologies they believed to be necessary to perform in situ searches for life elsewhere in our Solar System, 20 years or more in the future. Among suggested measurements for these searches, those pertaining to three potential indicators of life termed "dynamic disequilibrium," "catalysis," and "informational polymers" were identified as particularly promising avenues for further exploration...
January 2024: Astrobiology
#30
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Tommaso Zaccaria, Marien I de Jonge, Jorge Domínguez-Andrés, Mihai G Netea, Kristina Beblo-Vranesevic, Petra Rettberg
The health of astronauts during space travel to new celestial bodies in the Solar System is a critical factor in the planning of a mission. Despite cleaning and decontamination protocols, microorganisms from the Earth have been and will be identified on spacecraft. This raises concerns for human safety and planetary protection, especially if these microorganisms can evolve and adapt to the new environment. In this study, we examined the tolerance of clinically relevant nonfastidious bacterial species that originate from environmental sources ( Burkholderia cepacia , Klebsiella pneumoniae , Pseudomonas aeruginosa , and Serratia marcescens ) to simulated martian conditions...
January 2024: Astrobiology
#31
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Catherine Maggiori, Miguel Angel Fernández-Martínez, Louis-Jacques Bourdages, Laura Sánchez-García, Mercedes Moreno-Paz, Jesús Manuel Sobrado, Daniel Carrizo, Álvaro Vicente-Retortillo, Jacqueline Goordial, Lyle G Whyte
In the search for life in our Solar System, Mars remains a promising target based on its proximity and similarity to Earth. When Mars transitioned from a warmer, wetter climate to its current dry and freezing conditions, any putative extant life probably retreated into habitable refugia such as the subsurface or the interior of rocks. Terrestrial cryptoendolithic microorganisms ( i.e., those inhabiting rock interiors) thus represent possible modern-day Mars analogs, particularly those from the hyperarid McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica...
December 28, 2023: Astrobiology
#32
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Jamie S Foster, Tina M Henkin, Tony Romeo, Andrew C Schuerger, Peter Setlow, Robert J Ferl, Kelly C Rice, Eric W Triplett, Patricia Fajardo-Cavazos
No abstract text is available yet for this article.
December 27, 2023: Astrobiology
#33
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Denise K Buckner, Morgan J Anderson, Sydney Wisnosky, Walter Alvarado, Michel Nuevo, Amy J Williams, Antonio J Ricco, Anamika, Sara Debic, Lauren Friend, Trinh Hoac, Linda Jahnke, Leslie Radosevich, Ross Williams, Mary Beth Wilhelm
Lipids are a geologically robust class of organics ubiquitous to life as we know it. Lipid-like soluble organics are synthesized abiotically and have been identified in carbonaceous meteorites and on Mars. Ascertaining the origin of lipids on Mars would be a profound astrobiological achievement. We enumerate origin-diagnostic features and patterns in two acyclic lipid classes, fatty acids ( i.e., carboxylic acids) and acyclic hydrocarbons, by collecting and analyzing molecular data reported in over 1500 samples from previously published studies of terrestrial and meteoritic organics...
December 26, 2023: Astrobiology
#34
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Siveen Thlaijeh, Kevin Lepot, Yvain Carpentier, Armelle Riboulleau, Dumitru Duca, Marin Vojkovic, Anuradha Tewari, Johan Sarazin, Mathilde Bon, Nicolas Nuns, Nicolas Tribovillard, Cristian Focsa
Laser desorption-ionization mass spectrometry (MS) shows great potential for in situ molecular analysis of planetary surfaces and microanalysis of space-returned samples or (micro)fossils. Coupled with pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS) in ESA's ExoMars project, this technique could help assess further the origin of sulfur-bearing organic matter (OM) recently detected on Mars. To unravel this potential, we analyzed sulfurized microbial OM from ca. 150 million year-old carbonates with laser desorption-ionization mass spectrometry (single- and two-step: LDI-MS and L2MS), in comparison with time-of-flight secondary-ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and Py-GC-MS...
December 18, 2023: Astrobiology
#35
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Manasvi Lingam
The ubiquity of information transmission via molecular communication between cells is comprehensively documented on Earth; this phenomenon might even have played a vital role in the origin(s) and early evolution of life. Motivated by these considerations, a simple model for molecular communication entailing the diffusion of signaling molecules from transmitter to receiver is elucidated. The channel capacity C (maximal rate of information transmission) and an optimistic heuristic estimate of the actual information transmission rate <mml:math xmlns:mml="https://www...
December 18, 2023: Astrobiology
#36
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Jeffrey T Osterhout, Kenneth A Farley, Meenakshi Wadhwa, Jonathan Treffkorn, Eric Kulczycki
The sample tubes on board NASA's Perseverance rover are designed to contain rocks, regolith, and atmospheric gases and are hermetically sealed on the surface of Mars to minimize sample loss, alteration, and contamination. Following a robust testing program during mission development, it was determined that the helium (He) leak rates of flight-like sample tubes sealed under a range of conditions were typically no greater than ∼10-10 standard cubic centimeters per second (scc/s); leak rates below this value could not be measured since this is the detection limit of commercially available He leak detectors...
December 18, 2023: Astrobiology
#37
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Marco E Castillo, Andrej Grubisic, Samuel Larson, Desmond Kaplan, Ryan M Danell, Friso H W van Amerom, Xiang Li, William B Brinckerhoff, Brian J Glass
The highly compact Linear Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer (LITMS), developed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, combines Mars-ambient laser desorption-mass spectrometry (LD-MS) and pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) through a single, miniaturized linear ion trap mass analyzer. The LITMS instrument is based on the Mars Organic Molecule Analyser (MOMA) investigation developed for the European Space Agency's ExoMars Rover Mission with further enhanced analytical features such as dual polarity ion detection and a dual frequency RF (radio frequency) power supply allowing for an increased mass range...
December 11, 2023: Astrobiology
#38
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Rebecca D Prescott, Yvonne L Chan, Eric J Tong, Fiona Bunn, Chiyoko T Onouye, Christy Handel, Chien-Chi Lo, Karen Davenport, Shannon Johnson, Mark Flynn, Jennifer A Saito, Herb Lee, Kaleomanuiwa Wong, Brittany N Lawson, Kayla Hiura, Kailey Sager, Mia Sadones, Ethan C Hill, Derek Esibill, Charles S Cockell, Rosa Santomartino, Patrick S G Chain, Alan W Decho, Stuart P Donachie
Democratizing genomic data science, including bioinformatics, can diversify the STEM workforce and may, in turn, bring new perspectives into the space sciences. In this respect, the development of education and research programs that bridge genome science with "place" and world-views specific to a given region are valuable for Indigenous students and educators. Through a multi-institutional collaboration, we developed an ongoing education program and model that includes Illumina and Oxford Nanopore sequencing, free bioinformatic platforms, and teacher training workshops to address our research and education goals through a place-based science education lens...
December 11, 2023: Astrobiology
#39
JOURNAL ARTICLE
B Glass, D Bergman, V Parro, L Kobayashi, C Stoker, R Quinn, A Davila, P Willis, W Brinckerhoff, K Warren-Rhodes, M B Wilhelm, L Caceres, J DiRuggiero, K Zacny, M Moreno-Paz, A Dave, S Seitz, A Grubisic, M Castillo, R Bonaccorsi
With advances in commercial space launch capabilities and reduced costs to orbit, humans may arrive on Mars within a decade. Both to preserve any signs of past (and extant) martian life and to protect the health of human crews (and Earth's biosphere), it will be necessary to assess the risk of cross-contamination on the surface, in blown dust, and into the near-subsurface (where exploration and resource-harvesting can be reasonably anticipated). Thus, evaluating for the presence of life and biosignatures may become a critical-path Mars exploration precursor in the not-so-far future, circa 2030...
December 6, 2023: Astrobiology
#40
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Rosalba Bonaccorsi, Brian Glass, Mercedes Moreno-Paz, Miriam García-Villadangos, Kimberley Warren-Rhodes, Victor Parro, Juan Manuel Manchado, Mary Beth Wilhelm, Christopher P McKay
In 2019, the Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies (ARADS) project field-tested an autonomous rover-mounted robotic drill prototype for a 6-Sol life detection mission to Mars (Icebreaker). ARADS drilled Mars-like materials in the Atacama Desert (Chile), one of the most life-diminished regions on Earth, where mitigating contamination transfer into life-detection instruments becomes critical. Our Contamination Control Strategy and Implementation (CCSI) for the Sample Handling and Transfer System (SHTS) hardware (drill, scoop and funnels) included out-of-simulation protocol testing (out-of-sim) for hardware decontamination and verification during the 6-Sol simulation (in-sim)...
December 2023: Astrobiology
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