AbSciCon '08: Second Meeting of the Origins of Life Focus Group

May 5, 2008 / Written by: Andrzej Pohorille

The meeting took place on April 17, 2008 during the AbSciCon 2008 in Santa Clara, California. 38 scientists participated in this meeting. As previously, this report summarizes main conclusions not only from the meeting, but also from a number of conversations that I had with members of the Group during the conference.

The agenda consisted of four items:

• A brief report on the upcoming ISSOL meeting in Florence.
• Report from my presentation on our focus group to the NAI Executive Council on 4/14/2008.
• Presentation of our new website.
• General discussion.

ISSOL. We expected that the ISSOL presentation would be done by Enzo Gallori, who chairs the Organizing Committee for the meeting. Unfortunately, Enzo was unable to come to AbSciCon, but was kind enough to send a few slides about ISSOL. In brief, the deadline for abstract submission is May 2nd. The meeting will take place in Florence on August 24-29. For further details check out either our or the ISSOL website.

Website. Perhaps the most important part of the meeting was our discussion centered at the website. The website, which has been developed by Shige Abe and Marco Boldt at the NAI Central, contains several standard sections, such as member profiles. There was, however, the consensus that we would like this site not only to provide information about the Focus Group but also be the main source of information about the field on the Internet. This is especially important because the Internet is littered with incomplete, incorrect and misleading information about our field. To this end we created two additional sections: “library of resources” and “educational material”. In the library of resources we would like to have slide shows from interesting lectures, podcasts, bibliography of important articles and relevant books, interesting articles, opinion pieces, links, etc. without violating copyrights. This needs to be organized, but we will have to go through a process of “early accretion” before we do so. Also, we would like to develop a “wikipedia style” glossary of concepts in the field. Finally, following suggestions from the participants, our website developers work on setting up a forum and blog sections. As always, we look for further suggestions.

NASA/NSF collaboration. An important development at the astrobiology town hall meeting on Tuesday was the announcement by John Rummel that NASA plans to enter into collaboration with NSF on a joint origin of life research program. At our meeting there was a consensus that our involvement in these plans might be beneficial. I will write John offering our participation and we will go from there.

There are several action items that transpired from the meeting.

• Volunteers. We need volunteers to help with collecting, organizing and perhaps posting material for the website. In particular, we look for people who will take responsibility for specific sections of the website, such as research highlights, bibliography, educational material etc. (see below). If you want to volunteer please contact me and let me know what and how much you are willing to do.
• Profiles. If you haven’t provided your profile we hope that you will find time to do so. We would like to have everybody’s pictures, so we can recognize each other when we meet. Also, it would be nice to have an image or two associated with everybody’s work that would be attached to the profile.
• Publications. If you publish (or have recently published) a paper please send the citation and the abstract. We will post it on the website. This benefits both the readers and the authors.
• Resources and educational material. We are looking for contributions to these sections, as described in the paragraph about the website.
• Research highlights. At the center of our home page there is a brief story based on interesting, current research. If you want to contribute to research highlights please e-mail me a brief description of your research and images. You can also provide a longer version if you wish to do so.
• Radio show. Dave Summers reminded that Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute has a weekly radio show devoted to astronomy and astrobiology. He is always looking for interesting topics. If you would like to participate in this show (you can do it by phone) please contact Dave at David.P.Summers@nasa.gov.
• Mars Sample Return. Dave Beaty from JPL, who manages the Mars Sample Return Program, asks for our opinion about how to select the sample and what to look for as possible signs of life. He solicits inputs from different astrobiology communities and we shouldn’t be left out of the process.

Please remember that success of the Focus Group is a collective effort that depends on the involvement of all of us, even to a small extent.

The next meeting of the focus group will take place at ISSOL in August. I hope to see you there.