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NASA NTRS2011

delta C-13 Analysis of Mars Analog Carbonates Using Evolved Gas Cavity - Ringdown Spectrometry on the 2010 Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition (AMASE)

The 2010 Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition (AMASE) investigated two distinct geologic settings on Svalbard, using instrumentation and techniques in development for future Mars missions, such as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), ExoMars, and Mars Sample Return (MSR). The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite, which will fly on MSL, was developed at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), together with several partners. SAM consists of a quadrupole mass spectrometer (QMS), a gas chromatograph CGC), and a tunable laser spectrometer (TLS), which all analyze gases created by evolved gas analysis (EGA). The two sites studied represent "biotic" and "abiotic" analogs; the "biotic" site being the Knorringfjell fossil methane seep, and the "abiotic" site being the basaltic Sigurdfjell vent complex. The data presented here represent experiments to measure the carbon isotopic composition of carbonates from these two analogs using evolved gas analysis coupled with a commercial cavity ringdown CO2 isotopic analyzer (Picarro) as a proxy for the TLS on SAM.

Stern, J. C.↗

NASA NTRS2011

Comets as Parent Bodies of CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites and Possible Habitats of Ice-Microbiota

Recent studies of comets and cometary dust have confirmed the presence of biologically relevant organic molecules along with clay minerals and water ice. It is also now well established by deuterium/hydrogen ratios that the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites contain indigenous extraterrestrial water. The evidence of extensive aqueous alteration of the minerals in these meteorites led to the hypothesis that water-bearing asteroids or comets represent the parent bodies of the CI1 (and perhaps CM2) carbonaceous meteorites. These meteorites have also been shown to possess a diverse array of complex organics and chiral and morphological biomarkers. Stable isotope studies by numerous independent investigators have conclusively established that the complex organics found in these meteorites are both indigenous and extraterrestrial in nature. Although the origin of these organics is still unknown, some researchers have suggested that they originated by unknown abiotic mechanisms and may have played a role in the delivery of chiral biomolecules and the origin of life on Early Earth. In this paper we review these results and investigate the thermal history of comets. We show that permanent as well as transient domains of liquid water can be maintained on a comet under a plausible set of assumptions. With each perihelion passage of a comet volatiles are preferentially released, and during millions of such passages the comet could shed crustal debris that may survive transit through the Earth s atmosphere as a carbonaceous meteorite. We review the current state of knowledge of comets and carbonaceous meteorites. We also present the results of recent studies on the long-term viability of terrestrial ice-microbiota encased in ancient glacial ice and permafrost. We suggest that the conditions which have been observed to prevail on many comets do not preclude either survivability (or even the active metabolism and growth) of many types of eukaryotic and prokaryotic microbial extremophiles-including algae, cyanobacteria, bacteria and archaea. It is argued that the chemical and morphological biomarkers detected on comets and carbonaceous meteorites can be explained by ancient microbial activity without the need to invoke unknown abiotic production mechanisms.

Wickramasinghe, N. Chandra↗

NASA NTRS2011

New Insights into Prebiotic Chemistry from Old Archived Miller Extracts

Following the discovery of an archived set of samples from Stanley Miller's early experiments, analyses were undertaken to better understand the diversity of compounds produced from electric discharges acting on reducing gas mixtures. The paper chromatography methods that Miller used in the 1950s were only capable of detecting a few amino acids and were unable to provide substantial quantitative data relative to today's techniques. Current analytical techniques are much more sensitive and selective, and are capable of precisely quantifying a much larger range of amino acids and their enantiomeric abundances. In one study, preserved dried samples produced by Miller using a lesser-known volcanic apparatus which differed from Miller's classic apparatus in that it utilized an aspirator that injected steam into the electric discharge chamber, simulating a volcanic eruption. The volcanic apparatus produced a wider variety of amino acids than the classic configuration. Prebiotic compounds synthesized in these environments may have locally accumulated where they could have undergone further processing. An additional preserved set of samples from an experiment conducted in 1958 were also found in Miller's archived collection. These samples which had been generated using a mixture of CH4, NH3, H2S and CO2 were collected, catalogued, and stored by Miller, but for unknown reasons were never studied. In our analyses a total of 23 amino acids and 4 amines, including 7 organosulfur compounds, were detected in these samples. The major amino acids with chiral centers are racemic within the accuracy of the measurements, indicating that they are not contaminants introduced during sample storage. This experiment marks the first synthesis of sulfur amino acids from spark discharge experiments designed to imitate primordial environments. The relative yield of some amino acids, in particular the isomers of amino butyric acid, are the highest ever found in a spark discharge experiment. The simulated primordial conditions used by Miller in these experiments may serve as a model for early volcanic plume chemistry and provide insight to the possible roles such plumes may have played in abiotic organic synthesis. Additionally, the overall abundances of the synthesized amino acids in the presence of H2S are very similar to the abundances found in some carbonaceous meteorites, suggesting that H2S may have played an important role in prebiotic reactions in early solar system environments. Although experiments using a variety of gases as components of the primordial Earth's atmospheric composition and a spark discharge apparatus configured according to Miller's original or volcanic design can be readily carried out, the unique opportunity to investigate samples prepared by the pioneer in abiotic synthesis using state of the art analytical methods is of considerable historic interest.

Parker, Eric T.↗

NASA NTRS2012

The Importance of Meteorite Collections to Sample Return Missions: Past, Present, and Future Considerations

While much of the scientific community s current attention is drawn to sample return missions, it is the existing meteorite and cosmic dust collections that both provide the paradigms to be tested by these missions and the context for interpreting the results. Recent sample returns from the Stardust and Hayabusa missions provided us with new materials and insights about our Solar System history and processes. As an example, Stardust sampled CAIs among the population of cometary grains, requiring extensive and unexpected radial mixing in the early solar nebula. This finding would not have been possible, however, without extensive studies of meteoritic CAIs that established their high-temperature, inner Solar System formation. Samples returned by Stardust also revealed the first evidence of a cometary amino acid, a discovery that would not have been possible with current in situ flight instrument technology. The Hayabusa mission provided the final evidence linking ordinary chondrites and S asteroids, a hypothesis that developed from centuries of collection and laboratory and ground-based telescopic studies. In addition to these scientific findings, studies of existing meteorite collections have defined and refined the analytical techniques essential to studying returned samples. As an example, the fortuitous fall of the Allende CV3 and Murchison CM2 chondrites within months before the return of Apollo samples allowed testing of new state-of-the-art analytical facilities. The results of those studies not only prepared us to better study lunar materials, but unanticipated discoveries changed many of our concepts about the earliest history and processes of the solar nebula. This synergy between existing collections and future space exploration is certainly not limited to sample return missions. Laboratory studies confirmed the existence of meteorites from Mars and raised the provocative possibility of preservation of ancient microbial life. The laboratory studies in turn led to a new wave of Mars exploration that ultimately could lead to sample return focused on evidence for past or present life. This partnership between collections and missions will be increasingly important in the coming decades as we discover new questions to be addressed and identify targets for for both robotic and human exploration . Nowhere is this more true than in the ultimate search for the abiotic and biotic processes that produced life. Existing collections also provide the essential materials for developing and testing new analytical schemes to detect the rare markers of life and distinguish them from abiotic processes. Large collections of meteorites and the new types being identified within these collections, which come to us at a fraction of the cost of a sample return mission, will continue to shape the objectives of future missions and provide new ways of interpreting returned samples.

Welzenbach, L. C.↗

NASA NTRS2012

The Search for Life on Mars - Current Knowledge, Earth Analogues, and Principal Issues

For centuries, the planet Mars has been imagined as a possible abode for life. Serious searches for life's signatures began in the 19th century via ground-based visual astronomy that stimulated a vibrant fantasy literature but little lasting scientific knowledge. Modern scientific inquiry has emphasized the search for chemical signatures of life in the soil and rocks at the planet's surface, and via biomarker gases in the atmosphere. Today, investigations are based on high-resolution spectroscopy at Earth's largest telescopes along with planet orbiting and landed space missions. Methane has assumed central importance in these searches. Living systems produce more than 900/0 of Earth's atmospheric methane; the balance is of geochemical origin. Abundant methane is not expected in an oxidizing atmosphere such as Mars', and its presence would imply recent release - whether biological or geochemical. F or that reason, the quest for methane on Mars has been a continuing thread in the fabric of searches conducted since 1969. I will review aspects of the discovery and distribution of methane on Mars, and will mention ongoing extended searches for clues to its origin and destruction. On Earth, hydrogen (generated via serpentinization or radiolysis of water) provides an important 'fuel' for carbonate-reducing and sulphate-reducing biota (CH4 and H2S producers, respectively). Several such communities are known to reside at depth in continental domains (e.g., Lidy Hot Springs, Idaho; Witwatersrand Basin, S. Africa). If similar conditions exist in favourable locations on Mars, organisms similar to these could likely prosper there. Geologic (abiotic) production will also be mentioned, especially abiotic methane production associated with low-temperature serpentinization (e.g., terrestrial ophiolites). It is vitally important to pursue evidence for geochemical and biological production with equal vigour and intellectual weight lest unwanted and unintended bias contaminate the results. Finally, I will touch upon unresolved questions and issues posed by the methane detections.

Mumma, Michael J.↗

NASA NTRS2012

Nucleobases and Prebiotic Molecules in Organic Residues Produced from the Ultraviolet Photo-Irradiation of Pyrimidine in NH3 and H2O+NH3 Ices

Although not yet identified in the interstellar medium (ISM), N-heterocycles including nucleobases the information subunits of DNA and RNA are present in carbonaceous chondrites, which indicates that molecules of biological interest can be formed in non-terrestrial environments via abiotic pathways. Recent laboratory experiments and ab-initio calculations have already shown that the irradiation of pyrimidine in pure H2O ices leads to the formation of a suite of oxidized pyrimidine derivatives, including the nucleobase uracil. In the present work, NH3:pyrimidine and H2O:NH3:pyrimidine ice mixtures with different relative proportions were irradiated with UV photons under astrophysically relevant conditions. Liquid- and gas-chromatography analysis of the resulting organic residues has led to the detection of the nucleobases uracil and cytosine, as well as other species of prebiotic interest such as urea and small amino acids. The presence of these molecules in organic residues formed under abiotic conditions supports scenarios in which extraterrestrial organics that formed in space and were subsequently delivered to telluric planets via comets and meteorites could have contributed to the inventory of molecules that triggered the first biological reactions on their surfaces.

Nuevo, Michel↗

NASA NTRS2013

Monitoring Regional Forest Disturbances across the US with near Real Time MODIS NDVI Products Resident to the ForWarn Forest Threat Early Warning System

Forest threats across the US have become increasingly evident in recent years. Sometimes these have resulted in regionally evident disturbance progressions (e.g., from drought, bark beetle outbreaks, and wildfires) that can occur across multiyear durations and have resulted in extensive forest overstory mortality. In addition to stand replacement disturbances, other forests are subject to ephemeral, sometimes yearly defoliation from various insects and varying types and intensities of ephemeral damage from storms. Sometimes, after prolonged severe disturbance, signs of recovery in terms of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) can occur. The growing prominence and threat of forest disturbances in part have led to the formation and implementation of the 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act which mandated that national forest threat early warning system be developed and deployed. In response, the US Forest Service collaborated with NASA, DOE Oakridge National Laboratory, and the USGS Eros Data Center to build and roll-out the near real time ForWarn early warning system for monitoring regionally evident forest disturbances. Given the diversity of disturbance types, severities, and durations, ForWarn employs multiple historical baselines that are used with current NDVI to derive a suite of six forest change products that are refreshed every 8 days. ForWarn employs daily quarter kilometer MODIS NDVI data from the Aqua and Terra satellites, including MOD13 data for deriving historical baseline NDVIs and eMODIS 7 NDVI for compiling current NDVI. In doing so, the Time Series Product Tool and the Phenological Parameters Estimation Tool are used to temporally de-noise, fuse, and aggregate current and historical MODIS NDVIs into 24 day composites refreshed every 8 days with 46 dates of products per year. The 24 day compositing interval enables disturbances to be detected, while minimizing the frequency of residual atmospheric contamination. Forest change products are computed versus the previous 1, previous 3, and all previous years in the MODIS record for a given 24 day interval. Other "weekly" forest change products include one computed using an adaptive length compositing method for quicker detection of disturbances, two others that adjust for seasonal fluctuations in normal vegetation phenology (e.g., early versus late springs). This overall approach enables forest disturbance dynamics from a variety of regionally evident biotic and abiotic forest disturbances to be viewed and assessed through the calendar year. The change products are also being utilized for forest change trend analysis and for developing regional forest overstory mortality products. ForWarn's forest change products are used to alert forest health specialists about new forest disturbances. Such alerts are also typically based on available Landsat, aerial, and ground data as well as communications with forest health specialists and previous experience. ForWarn products have been used to detect and track many types of regional disturbances to multiple forest types, including defoliation from caterpillars and severe storms, as well as mortality from both biotic and abiotic agents (e.g., bark beetles, drought, fire, anthropogenic clearing). ForWarn offers products that could be combined with other geospatial data on forest biomass to assess forest disturbance carbon impacts within the conterminous US.

Spruce, Joseph P.↗

NASA NTRS2014

Organic Analysis of Catalytic Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis Products and Ordinary Chondrite Meteorites by Stepwise Pyrolysis-GCMS: Organics in the Early Solar Nebula

Abiotic generation of complex organic compounds, in the early solar nebula that formed our solar system, is hypothesized by some to occur via Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis. In its simplest form, FT synthesis involves the low temperature (<300degC) catalytic reaction of hydrogen and carbon monoxide gases to form more complex hydrocarbon compounds, primarily n-alkanes, via reactive nano-particulate iron, nickel, or cobalt, for example. Industrially, this type of synthesis has been utilized in the gas-to-liquid process to convert syngas, produced from coal, natural gas, or biomass, into paraffin waxes that can be cracked to produce liquid diesel fuels. In general, the effect of increasing reaction temperature (>300degC) produces FT products that include lesser amounts of n-alkanes and greater alkene, alcohol, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) compounds. We have begun to experimentally investigate FT synthesis in the context of abiotic generation of organic compounds in the early solar nebula. It is generally thought that the early solar nebula included abundant hydrogen and carbon monoxide gases and nano-particulate matter such as iron and metal silicates that could have catalyzed the FT reaction. The effect of FT reaction temperature, catalyst type, and experiment duration on the resulting products is being investigated. These solid organic products are analyzed by thermal-stepwise pyrolysis-GCMS and yield the types and distribution of hydrocarbon compounds released as a function of temperature. We show how the FT products vary by reaction temperature, catalyst type, and experimental duration and compare these products to organic compounds found to be indigenous to ordinary chondrite meteorites. We hypothesize that the origin of organics in some chondritic meteorites, that represent an aggregation of materials from the early solar system, may at least in part be from FT synthesis that occurred in the early solar nebula.

Locke, Darren R.↗

NASA NTRS2013

Phylogenetic Conservatism in Plant Phenology

Phenological events defined points in the life cycle of a plant or animal have been regarded as highly plastic traits, reflecting flexible responses to various environmental cues. The ability of a species to track, via shifts in phenological events, the abiotic environment through time might dictate its vulnerability to future climate change. Understanding the predictors and drivers of phenological change is therefore critical. Here, we evaluated evidence for phylogenetic conservatism the tendency for closely related species to share similar ecological and biological attributes in phenological traits across flowering plants. We aggregated published and unpublished data on timing of first flower and first leaf, encompassing 4000 species at 23 sites across the Northern Hemisphere. We reconstructed the phylogeny for the set of included species, first, using the software program Phylomatic, and second, from DNA data. We then quantified phylogenetic conservatism in plant phenology within and across sites. We show that more closely related species tend to flower and leaf at similar times. By contrasting mean flowering times within and across sites, however, we illustrate that it is not the time of year that is conserved, but rather the phenological responses to a common set of abiotic cues. Our findings suggest that species cannot be treated as statistically independent when modelling phenological responses.Closely related species tend to resemble each other in the timing of their life-history events, a likely product of evolutionarily conserved responses to environmental cues. The search for the underlying drivers of phenology must therefore account for species' shared evolutionary histories.

phylogenetic conservatism↗

NASA NTRS2015

Scaffold of Asymmetric Organic Compounds - Magnetite Plaquettes

Life on Earth shows preference towards the set of organics with particular spatial configurations, this 'selectivity' is a crucial criterion for life. With only rare exceptions, life prefers the left- (L-) form over the right- (D-) form of amino acids, resulting in an L-enantiomeric excess (L-ee). Recent studies have shown Lee for alpha-methyl amino acids in some chondrites. Since these amino acids have limited terrestrial occurrence, the origin of their stereoselectivity is nonbiological, and it seems appropriate to conclude that chiral asymmetry, the molecular characteristic that is common to all terrestrial life form, has an abiotic origin. A possible abiotic mechanism that can produce chiral asymmetry in meteoritic amino acids is their formation with the presence of asymmetric catalysts, as mineral crystallization can produce spatially asymmetric structures. Magnetite is shown to be an effective catalyst for the formation of amino acids that are commonly found in chondrites. Magnetite 'plaquettes' (or 'platelets'), first described by Jedwab, show an interesting morphology of barrel-shaped stacks of magnetite disks with an apparent dislocation-induced spiral growth that seem to be connected at the center. A recent study by Singh et al. has shown that magnetites can self-assemble into helical superstructures. Such molecular asymmetry could be inherited by adsorbed organic molecules. In order to understand the distribution of 'spiral' magnetites in different meteorite classes, as well as to investigate their apparent spiral configurations and possible correlation to molecular asymmetry, we observed polished sections of carbonaceous chondrites (CC) using scanning electron microscope (SEM) imaging. The sections were also studied by electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) in order to reconstruct the crystal orientation along the stack of magnetite disks.

Chan, Q. H. S.↗

NASA NTRS2015

Evidence from Meteorites for Multiple Possible Amino Acid Alphabets for the Origins of Life

A key question for the origins of life is understanding which amino acids made up the first proteins synthesized during the origins of life. The canonical set of 20 - 22 amino acids used in proteins are all alpha-amino, alpha-hydrogen isomers that, nevertheless, show considerable variability in properties including size, hydrophobicity, and ionizability. Abiotic amino acid synthesis experiments such as Miller-Urey spark discharge reactions produce a set of up to 23 amino acids, depending on starting materials and reaction conditions, with significant abundances of both alpha- and non-alpha-amino acid isomers. These two sets of amino acids do not completely overlap; of the 23 spark discharge amino acids, only 11 are used in modern proteins. Furthermore, because our understanding of conditions on the early Earth are limited, it is unclear which set(s) of conditions employed in spark discharge or hydrothermal reactions are correct, leaving us with significant uncertainty about the amino acid alphabet available for the origins of life on Earth. Meteorites, the surviving remnants of asteroids and comets that fall to the Earth, offer the potential to study authentic samples of naturally-occurring abiotic chemistry, and thus can provide an alternative approach to constraining the amino acid library during the origins of life.

Burton, A. S.↗

NASA NTRS2015

Preservation of Lipid Biomarkers Under Prolonged and Extreme Hyperaridity in Atacama Desert Soils

Molecular biomarkers are the most direct biosignatures of life on early Earth and a key target in the search for life on Mars. Lipid biomarkers are of particular interest given their ability to survive oxidative degradation and record microbial presence and activity of microorganisms that occurred billions of years ago (Eigenbrode, 2008). Environmental conditions that suspend biotic and abiotic degradative processes prior to lithification can lead to enhanced biomolecular preservation over geological time-scales. The hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile offers a unique environment to investigate lipid biomarker taphonomy under extreme and prolonged dryness. We investigated the accumulation and degree of preservation of lipid biomarkers in million-year-old hyperarid soils where primarily abiotic conditions influence their taphonomy. Soils were extracted and free and membrane bound lipids were analyzed across a vertical profile of 2.5 meters in the Yungay hyper-arid core of the Atacama Desert. Due to the extremely low inventory of biomass in Atacama soils, samples were collected by scientists wearing cleanroom suits to minimize anthropogenic contamination during sampling. Fatty acids were found to be well preserved in Yungay soils, and were most abundant in the clay-rich soils at approx.2 m depth (approx.750 ng of fatty acid methyl ester/g of soil). These buried clays layers were fluvially deposited approximately 2 million years ago, and have been excluded from exposure to rainwater and modern surficial processes since their emplacement (Ewing et al., 2008). Monocarboxylic fatty acid, monohydroxy fatty acid, glycerol tetraether, and n-alkane hydrocarbon content was found to change with depth. Lipid biomarker content in deeper soil layers is suggestive of soils having been formed at a time when environmental conditions were capable of supporting active microbial communities and plants. In short, total lipid extracts reveal a remarkable degree of lipid biomarker preservation even in the oldest soils analyzed (ca. 2 Myr) indicating that typical diagenetic processes of lipid destruction are arrested under extreme dryness. This result has implications for the search for molecular biomarkers on Mars, which could have experienced millions to billions of years of extreme hyperaridity.

Lipid Biomarkers↗

NASA NTRS2017

Future Food Production System Development Pulling from Space Biology Crop Growth Testing in Veggie

Preliminary crop testing using Veggie indicates the environmental conditions provided by the ISS are generally suitable for food crop production. When plant samples were returned to Earth for analysis, their levels of nutrients were comparable to Earth-grown ground controls. Veggie-grown produce food safety microbiology analysis indicated that space-grown crops are safe to consume. Produce sanitizing wipes were used on-orbit to further reduce risk of foodborne illness. Validation growth tests indicated abiotic challenges of insufficient or excess fluid delivery, potentially reduced air flow leading to excess water, elevated CO2 leading to physiological responses, and microorganisms that became opportunistic pathogens. As NASA works to develop future space food production, several areas of research to define these systems pull from the Veggie technology validation tests. Research into effective, reusable water delivery and water recovery methods for future food production systems arises from abiotic challenges observed. Additionally, impacts of elevated CO2 and refinement of fertilizer and light recipes for crops needs to be assessed. Biotic pulls include methods or technologies to effectively sanitize produce with few consumables and low inputs; work to understand the phytomicrobiome and potentially use it to protect crops or enhance growth; selection of crops with high harvest index and desirable flavors for supplemental nutrition; crops that provide psychosocial benefits, and custom space crop development. Planning for future food production in a deep space gateway or a deep space transit vehicle requires methods of handling and storing seeds, and ensuring space seeds are free of contaminants and long-lived. Space food production systems may require mechanization and autonomous operation, with preliminary testing initiated to identify operations and capabilities that are candidates for automation. Food production design is also pulling from Veggie logistics lessons, as we learn about growing at different scales and move toward developing systems that require less launch mass. Veggie will be used as a test bed for novel food production technologies. Veggie is a relatively simple precursor food production system but the knowledge gained from space biology validation tests in Veggie will have far reaching repercussions on future exploration food production.

Veggie↗

NASA NTRS2017

Future Food Production System Development Pulling From Space Biology Crop Growth Testing in Veggie

Plants↗

NASA NTRS2019

Lipid Decontamination Procedures for Life Detection Missions

Molecular biosignatures are key targets for current, proposed, and future life detection missions. With the high accuracy and low limit of detection (LOD) that new and future instruments will require, decontamination of life detection hardware is necessary to prevent false positives. Lipids are a molecular biosignature of interest, as they are ubiquitous to all life as we know it, can survive unaltered in the geologic record for longer than any other biomolecule (i.e. billions of years), and form through both biotic and abiotic processes. Lipids display origin-diagnostic molecular patterns that can reveal biotic or abiotic synthesis, so finding them and ascertaining their molecular features is important for potentially detecting evidence of life elsewhere. Traditional methods of decontamination, or contamination control (CC), primarily clean hardware through fabrication in sterile (cleanroom) environments, killing microbes, and removing/flushing contaminants off instrument and spacecraft components. However, research suggests that some standard cleaning methods are either unlikely to remove lipid contaminants or are incompatible with life detection instrument materials. To solve this problem, I propose to find, test, and verify a decontamination method that thoroughly cleans instruments by destroying lipid molecules, but is simultaneously compatible with major materials used in these instruments. I will study the effects of traditional CC methods (including Dry Heat Microbial Reduction and Vapor phase Hydrogen Peroxide) and experimental CC methods (Electron Beam Irradiation) on lipid molecules for application to life detection instrumentation. I will then develop a CC plan for a novel lipid detector (ExCALiBR, Extractor for Chemical Analysis of Lipid Biomarkers in Regolith) searching for lipids in either soil or icy world scenarios. This plan will uphold planetary protection regulation requirements and validate experimental analyses of in-situ life detection tests.

Decontamination↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Evaluating Novel Approaches for In Situ Analysis in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life

Universal approaches to detect extraterrestrial life are required to determine whether life exists outside of earth. A significant limitation of current detection strategies is the absence of a reliable, universal approach. They do not provide mechanisms to detect life that has evolved distinctly from life on Earth. We hypothesize that the most basic, essential features of life that can be detected are that they decrease their internal entropy at the expense of free energy obtained from their surroundings and that they produce heat associated with metabolic reactions. We propose that by using a thermodynamic analysis of the energy associated with these fundamental components of life, one can readily quantify the degree of free energy difference between life forms or their remnants and their abiotic surroundings. Analysis of the free energy entropy term (and thus structural complexity) and enthalpy term (as a manifestation of the energy release caused by metabolic reactions) may provide definitive detection of the presence of life. As a part of our analysis we review data available in the literature about the thermodynamics of microbial growth to assess the extent microbial metabolism and growth may contribute to negative entropy of maintenance (metabolism) and structural complexity. Additionally, we evaluate the different mechanisms by which structural complexity can be measured using calorimetry. An experimental framework is considered using concepts from previous work that could be used to further validate the calorimetric methods for life detection by potentially differentiating between life forms or their remnants from an abiotic surrounding. Results obtained demonstrate the applications of this approach and indicate that modification of a microcalorimetric technique has potential for incorporation into a space exploration platform as a life-detection payload.

Life Detection, Calorimetry↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Search for Chiral Asymmetry as a Potential Biosignature in Samples from Mars

The search for evidence of extraterrestrial life in our solar system is currently guided by our understanding of terrestrial biology and its associated biosignatures. The observed homochirality in all life on Earth, that is, the predominance of “left-handed” or L-amino acids and “right-handed” or D-sugars, is a unique property of life that is crucial for molecular recognition, enzymatic function, information storage and structure and is thought to be a prerequisite for the origin or early evolution of life. Therefore, the detection of L- or D-enantiomeric excesses of chiral amino acids and sugars could be a powerful indicator of extant or extinct life on Mars or other habitable environments in our solar system. The exploration of habitable environments on Mars, including an assessment of the preservation potential for complex organics of either abiotic or biological origin, remains a key goal of both current and future Mars missions. Now with the unambiguous detection of indigenous organic matter in sedimentary rocks on Mars [1-3], NASA’s Curiosity rover has significantly advanced our understanding of the preservation of potential chemical biosignatures in the martian near surface. Although amino acids have not yet been identified by in situ measurements on Mars, if they were present, it is expected that amino acid hydrolysis and racemization would be very slow and any chiral or isotopic signatures from an extinct martian biota could be preserved for billions of years, given the extremely cold and dry surface conditions [4]. One of ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover payload instruments called the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA) includes a wet chemistry package capable of measuring the enantiomeric ratios of any chiral amino acids present at part-per-million concentrations or higher [5]. The complexity and limited duration of spaceflight operations and the known analytical challenges associated with in situ extraction and characterization of trace reduced organic compounds in ancient rocks make it challenging to determine the origins of martian organic matter found to date. Coordinated state-of-the-art laboratory measurements of returned samples from Mars that include spatially resolved chemical, mineralogical, and isotopic studies and molecule-specific isotopic and enantiomeric measurements will be required to firmly establish whether the complex organic matter detected on Mars comes from biotic or abiotic sources. Ultimately, sample return may be our best chance of identifying chemical biosignatures from a past or present martian biota, if one ever existed on Mars. NASA’s Perseverance rover will collect dozens of surface sample cores for possible future return to Earth by NASA and ESA. Here we review our current knowledge of the distributions and enantiomeric and isotopic compositions of non-biological amino acids found in meteorites compared to terrestrial biochemistry and propose a set of measurement criteria that should be used to help establish the origin of any chiral asymmetry detected in samples from Mars [6].

Daniel P Glavin↗

NASA NTRS2020

High productivity in hybrid-poplar plantations without isoprene emission to the atmosphere

Hybrid-poplar tree plantations provide a source for biofuel and biomass, but they also increase forest isoprene emissions. The consequences of increased isoprene emissions include higher rates of tropospheric ozone production, increases in the lifetime of methane, and increases in atmospheric aerosol production, all of which affect the global energy budget and/or lead to the degradation of air quality. Using RNA interference (RNAi) to suppress isoprene emission, we show that this trait, which is thought to be required for the tolerance of abiotic stress, is not required for high rates of photosynthesis and woody biomass production in the agroforest plantation environment, even in areas with high levels of climatic stress. Biomass production over 4 y in plantations in Arizona and Oregon was similar among genetic lines that emitted or did not emit significant amounts of isoprene. Lines that had substantially reduced isoprene emission rates also showed decreases in flavonol pigments, which reduce oxidative damage during extremes of abiotic stress, a pattern that would be expected to amplify metabolic dysfunction in the absence of isoprene production in stress-prone climate regimes. However, compensatory increases in the expression of other proteomic components, especially those associated with the production of protective compounds, such as carotenoids and terpenoids, and the fact that most biomass is produced prior to the hottest and driest part of the growing season explain the observed pattern of high biomass production with low isoprene emission. Our results show that it is possible to reduce the deleterious influences of isoprene on the atmosphere, while sustaining woody biomass production in temperate agroforest plantations.

oxidative stress↗