Astrobiology Researchers Earn Kudos

January 31, 2008 / Posted by: Wendy Dolci

Four researchers whose work is supported by NASA’s Astrobiology Program were singled out for recognition by their scientific peers last year. Norman R. Pace, Mitchell L. Sogin, John P. Grotzinger, and Nora Noffke all received awards in 2007 for their contributions to science.

Norman Pace, professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, earned the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) 2007 Abbott-ASM Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to the field of microbial ecology. Pace is a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute research team headed by the University of Colorado Center for Astrobiology. This team is studying the origin of stars and planets, development of habitable planets, “RNA World” and the origins of life, biological evolution on Earth, energetics of life on other planets, and philosophical aspects of astrobiology and the search for life elsewhere. Dr. Pace is the lead member of the group on the Boulder team that is working on development and use of ribosomal-RNA-based molecular methods to survey and study the microbial constituents of ecosystems in extreme environments. Results of this research thus far include the discovery of new groups of organisms living in anaerobic environments and the identification of hydrogen (as opposed to sulfur) as the fundamental energy source for thermophilic (heat-loving) microbial communities living in Yellowstone National Park’s hot springs.

“One of Dr. Pace’s greatest contributions to microbiology,” according to ASM, “is his original insight combining molecular evolutionary and phylogenetic perspectives with microbial ecology. Dr. Pace’s seminal ideas in cultivation-independent molecular approaches have positively transformed the science of microbial evolution and ecology.” Pace’s work plays an important role in the field of astrobiology.

Mitchell L. Sogin, director of the Josephine Bay Paul Center in Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, received ASM’s 2007 USFCC/J. Roger Porter Award, granted for “outstanding efforts by a scientist who has demonstrated the importance of microbial diversity through sustained curatorial or stewardship activities.” (USFCC is the United States Federation for Culture Collections.) Dr. Sogin’s research has expanded understanding of environmental microbiology diversity, according to ASM. Also worthy of note, according to ASM, is that Dr. Sogin has “brought the microbial world to the public through development of the Micro*Scope website, a teaching resource for information and educational activities.”

Sogin is Principal Investigator for an NAI research team headed by MBL that is dedicated to the study of environmental genomes and the evolution of complex systems in simple organisms. The MBL team’s astrobiology goal is to search for microbial diversity in rarely studied environments, some featuring conditions resembling those that may have existed millions to billions of years ago on other solar system bodies. The NAI has been funding the MBL team for the past eight years; Sogin has played a role in NASA’s Astrobiology Program and its predecessor, Exobiology, for decades.

The ASM awards were presented at the Society’s annual meeting in Toronto, Ontario, in May.

Two Principal Investigators with the Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program received awards last year for their contributions to biogeoscience – the study of the fundamental interactions between life and Earth’s atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere and possible similar interactions between extraterrestrial life, should it prove to exist, and its environmental conditions on other planets. John P. Grotzinger, Jones Professor of Geology at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), is the recipient of the 2007 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal. Nora Noffke, assistant professor in the Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Old Dominion University in Virginia, is the recipient of the 2007 Society of Sedimentary Geologists (SEPM) James Lee Wilson Award.

The NAS awards the Walcott Medal every five years, it says, “to encourage and reward individual achievement in advancing knowledge of Cambrian or Precambrian life and its history.” (The pre-Cambrian and Cambrian periods in the geologic history of Earth cover the time from about 500 million to 4.5 billion years ago.) Grotzinger, who is currently Fletcher Jones Professor of Geology in the Department of Geological and Planetary Sciences at CalTech, received this award (a medal and a prize of $10,000) “for the insightful elucidation of ancient carbonates and the stromatolites they contain, and for meticulous field research that has established the timing of early animal evolution.” Grotzinger was awarded a research grant from NASA’s Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program in 1999, for his studies of the record of the origin and evolution of early microbial life and environmental conditions contained in pre-Cambrian carbonate sediments.

At least four previous Walcott Medal winners – Hans J. Hofmann (2002), Andrew H. Knoll (1987, shared with Simon C. Morris), Preston Cloud (1977), and Elso S. Barghoorn (1972) – are well known names in the history of NASA exobiology and astrobiology research.

SEPM grants its Wilson Award for excellence in sedimentary geology by a young scientist. Nora Noffke earned her Ph.D. from the University of Oldenberg in Germany in 1997. She received the Wilson Award for her research on “microbially induced sedimentary structures,” or microbial mats. Noffke was awarded a research grant from NASA’s Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program in 2003 to study meso-Archean-age microbially induced sedimentary structures. (The meso-Archean period ranges from about 2.9 billion to 3.3 billion years ago.) Noffke is testing different methods of detecting these structures and differentiating them from abiotic structures of similar appearance. Her aim is to produce a catalogue of reference biosignatures that other astrobiologists could use to detect past or present extraterrestrial microbial life.

Grotzinger’s award was presented at a spring ceremony in Washington, D.C. Noffke’s award was presented at SEPM’s 2007 annual convention in April.