ASU scientists join NASA Astrobiology Institute

By James Hathaway

Y ou have to understand life if you are going to try to find it, particularly when you are looking in hostile alien environments. Scientists at Arizona State University are engaged in a broadly-based search for ancient and current life that extends from the biosystems of toxic hot springs of the deep ocean, to the stardust and meteorites left over from the early evolution of the solar system, and to many unimaginable places in between. This work involves the use of a wide variety of advanced technologies, ranging from highly sophisticated molecular analysis, to robots and advanced sensors for exploring distant planets and moons.

Though they come from diverse disciplines, these researchers are all united by a central question - does life exist beyond the earth?

Now, thanks to a new NASA research initiative, these disparate efforts will be connected by more than their goals. ASU is one of five university partners selected for membership in NASA's new "virtual" Astrobiology Institute and ASU research will be united under the auspices of a proposed new ASU Astrobiology Center that will coordinate curriculum development in astrobiology and help coordinate ongoing research with the work of scientists at other institutions around the country. Planned to take advantage of the next generation of internet technology, the NASA Astrobiology Center in California, NASA's center of excellence for Astrobiology and Information Technology. The new institute will use Next Generation Internet (NGI) and advanced telecommunications to link together the investigators and students at separate member institutions around the country. The NGI will also be used to facilitate the development of a variety of "virtual" institute activities to advance research and education in astrobiology.

Budget negotiations have not been completed yet, but NASA Astrobiology funding is expected to double by 2001.

"I'm excited for the whole university," said Jack Farmer, who coordinated the successful ASU proposal. Farmer, formerly a research scientist Research Center, joined ASU this fall as professor of geology.

"The ASU proposal resonates extremely well with the stated goals of the new Astrobiology Initiative and will really help put ASU on the map in this area," Farmer said. "As someone who has been involved in defining the core concepts of astrobiology through participation in NASA strategic planning activities, I think the ASU proposal captures both the breadth and the depth of research in this new field of science." Reflecting the university's long involvement with NASA's planetary programs and missions, as well as its unique strengths in evolutionary life sciences, planetary science and strategic collaborative partnerships, ASU's Astrobiology Center would focus on five different, although intersecting, research areas to answer key questions about the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the solar system:

• Exploring possible sources for the early chemistry that preceded the origin of life on Earth, biochemist John Cronin and new ASU cosmochemist Laurie Leshin will investigate the organic chemistry of carbonaceous meteorites and interplanetary dust particles. (This work will involve the extensive use of ASU's world-class meteorite collection.) In exploring the origin and early evolution of life, geochemist John Holloway and his colleagues will study the organic chemistry of hot vents of deep sea "black smokers" through a combination of theoretical, lab-simulated, and field-based methods. Holloway's goal is to determine if life could have had an origin at high temperatures, a suggestion that has recently been the focus of much interest in the scientific community.

• Robert Blankenship, first director of ASU's Center for Early Events in Photosynthesis, will explore another important aspect of early biosphere evolution by looking at the origin and evolution of the first photosynthetic systems. Oxygen-producing photosynthesis marked a critical step in the evolution of the Earth's atmosphere, climate and life, and this work has critical implications for the search for life in other places.

• A collaborative effort by Farmer and ASU geologists Tom Sharp and Paul Knauth will study the processes by which microorganisms become fossilized, and how more biological information can be extracted from the ancient rock record on Earth. This work will focus on a number of important modern environments including thermal springs and alkaline, saline lakes where environmental extremes are thought to be analogous to the ancient Earth. The fossil record of early life will also be studied to understand the nature of the early oceans and the conditions of salinity and temperature where life developed.

• Extending the study of evolution in extreme environments to embrace more complex ecosystems, an interdisciplinary team led by biologist Thomas Dowling will continue current research efforts in studying simple associations of microbes, plants, and animals to understand the evolution of ecosystems under different conditions of energy and nutrient availability.

• An interdisciplinary group including planetary geologists Philip Christensen and Ronald Greeley, as well as exobiologist Farmer will continue the experiments beyond Earth, exploring the surfaces of two of the most intriguing places in our solar system, Mars, and Europa. Christensen is the principal investigator for the Mars Global Surveyor's thermal emission spectrometer experiment, a remote sensing instrument that will identify and map the mineralogy of the Martian surface to help identify the best places to search for past or present life. Greeley, who heads Galileo imaging team, has been at the center of evaluating the new high resolution imaging data obtained from Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. The exciting prospect of an ocean beneath the icy mantle of Europa's crust has focused NASA's attention on developing a new mission there in 2003. With the prospect of a record of past life on Mars and living organisms on Europa, missions to Mars and Europa will provide ample opportunities to apply the lessons learned from the other astrobiological studies and to refine strategies in the search for extraterrestrial life.

"The budget supports research assistants at all levels; undergraduates, graduate assistants, and post-docs," interim principal investigator John Cronin notes. "There will be courses generated here in life on the universe, origins of life, planetary science, and so on. There will be a seminar series as well, and possibly an interdisciplinary degree program offered." "There are a lot of exciting educational outreach possibilities using state of the art internet resources and our distributed faculty," said Farmer. "ASU is an ideal place for this to happen - it has a well-known reputation for educational outreach in planetary studies."

Co-investigators in the ASU Astrobiology Center include John Holloway, Peggy O'Day, Paul Knauth, Thomas Sharp, Philip Christensen, Ronald Greeley, Laurie Leshin, and Carol Tang from the department of geology; Thomas Dowling and James Elser from the department of biology; and, as an institutional partner, Biosphere II.

Looking to the future, NASA's new Astrobiology initiative and ASU are a natural fit, according to ASU Interim Vice Provost for Research Jonathan Fink. "We've got strong planetary studies and planetary biology programs and an internationally known meteorite center. Integration in this area among our geology, geochemistry, and with life sciences programs seemed to make sense.

"ASU's participation in the NASA Astrobiology Institute places Arizona in the forefront of a world-class research effort to study life in the universe. Winning this award is a tribute to the quality of the ASU faculty, given the extraordinary caliber of the competition we faced."

You don't have to look to the sky to see the stars at ASU. As of August, the proposed ASU Astrobiology Center is two faculty members stronger. Adding critical expertise to an already strong ASU team are NASA exobiologist Jack Farmer, as well as cosmochemist Laurie Leshin from UCLA.

"ASU's membership in the NASA Institute happened because of our faculty strengths" said Jonathan Fink, former chair of geology and now ASU Interim Vice Provost for Research. "Both Farmer and Leshin add new dimensions to our programs and promise to raise the level of our research and collaboration even further."

Farmer, whose work at NASA's Ames Research Center and SETI has been used to support the exploration for life on Mars, specializes in the study of ancient fossils from hostile environments such as thermal springs and alkaline lakes. Farmer coordinated ASU's proposal for the Astrobiology Center and will be directing ASU's part of the NASA initiative. Farmer is joining ASU as professor of geology. Leshin, who received her BS in chemistry from ASU in 1987 and went on to receive a PhD in geochemistry from the California Institute of Technology, will also be joining the department and be a member of the soon-to-be-created center. Leshin's work studies the formation and evolution of planetary materials by combining laboratory investigation of meteoric and terrestrial samples with remotely obtained data from planetary surfaces and atmospheres. Leshin has a history of working with NASA, which is supporting much of her current research, and has been involved in the scientific debate over the possible existence of fossilized microorganisms in Martian meteorite ALH84001. Leshin will be joining ASU as an assistant professor of geology.

It's not mere chance that one of the world's foremost authorities on meteorite chemistry is coming to ASU. Leshin's research is expected to heavily involve the use of ASU's Nininger Meteorite Collection, the largest university collection of meteorites in the world. More additions to the faculty are anticipated. In January, the center will take on Gary Huss, the current director of the ion probe facility at the California Institute of Technology. This is not the beginning of Huss's relationship with ASU. Huss is the grandson of Harvey Nininger, the original donor of the ASU meteorite collection. Huss's arrival will coincide with ASU's acquisition of a National Science Foundation funded Ion Microscope for conducting meteorite analysis.

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