Novel Species of Bacteria Found Deep Within Greenland Glacier

Researchers from NAI’s Penn State Team announced at this week’s American Society of Microbiology General Meeting in Boston their discovery of a novel species of ultra-small bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles. Read Penn State’s press release here. The species is related genetically to certain bacteria found in fish, marine mud, and the roots of some plants, yet...

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Jim Kasting elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Geochemical Society

Jim Kasting was recently elected as Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Jim is a member of the NAI’s Pennsylvania State University and Virtual Planetary Laboratory @ UW teams, and a PI in the Exobiology program. The American Academy of Arts & Sciences is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and independent policy research centers. Jim has also been named a Fellow of the Geochemical Society. The honorary title...

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May 12, 2008 / Written by: Wendy Dolci

Subaerial Volcanoes Shift Oxygen Levels on Early Earth

Biomarkers in rocks prior to the rise in Earth’s atmospheric oxygen 2.5 billion years ago show cyanobacteria released oxygen at the same levels as today. What was happening to that oxygen? A new paper in this week’s Nature from NAI’s Penn State Team proposes that the rise of atmospheric oxygen occurred because the predominant sink for oxygen—enhanced submarine volcanism—was abruptly and permanently diminished during the Archaean–Proterozoic transition by a shift from predominantly submarine volcanism to a mix of subaerial...

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August 30, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe

New World Frogs

A new paper on the evolutionary relationships among New World tropical frogs was published online this week in PNAS. The authors, including members of the NAI Penn State Team, used DNA sequence and molecular clock analyses to further understand the frogs’ origin as more likely by dispersal over water from South America, than via land connections with North and South America.

June 6, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe

An Update from "Mars"

EVA continues at the Mars Desert Research Station where graduate student Irene Schneider from the NAI Penn State team is currently on expedition: “Biology: Encountered pond with trees on second stop, unique flower sample collected. Geology: First stop discovered small alcove in Morrison formation about 15 feet deep. Second stop yielded lake discussed above. Third stop found about 3 petrified tree stumps on ridge. Petrified wood and conglomerate samples collected. Astronomy: attempted but due to high winds and...

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April 9, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe

NAI Graduate Student Selected to Help Plan for Future Mars EVA

NAI graduate student Irene Schneider from Penn State has been selected by NASA/Mars Society as crew physicist for the upcoming expedition 61 for the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS). MDRS Crew 61 is a two week mission simulation where NASA, in collaboration with The Mars Society, simulates future manned missions to Mars. There she will be developing and helping implement the first Extra-Vehicular Activity emergency radiation protocols.

February 28, 2007 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Photosynthesis in the late Archean

A new study on carbon isotopes in sedimentary rocks from Western Australia by researchers from NAI’s Penn State and Carnegie Institution of Washington Teams supports the idea that small, shallow pools of water containing photosynthetic microbes existed on the early Earth ~ 2.72 Gya, about 300 million years before the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere. Their findings suggest a “global-scale expansion” of these habitats, and a progression away from anaerobic ecosystems and toward photosynthetic communities before the oxygenation...

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October 16, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Exotic Earths

Collaborators from NAI’s Teams at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, and Penn State as well as the former Virtual Planetary Lab Team have a paper this week in Science discussing the possible formation of “Exotic Earths.” Their models have simulated terrestrial planet growth during and after inward giant planet migration. Their results cause them to speculate that more than a third of the known systems of giant planets may harbor Earth-like planets.

September 7, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

A New Book on the Evoution of Earth's Early Atmosphere

With significant contribution from NAI’s Penn State University Team, a new book entitled “Evolution of Early Earth’s Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, and Biosphere – Constraints from Ore Deposits”, edited by Stephen E. Kesler and Hiroshi Ohmoto, is available. It grew from a 2002 Pardee Symposium held during the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting sponsored in part by the NAI.

September 7, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Earth's Ancient Atmosphere: the Rise of Oxygen

Most geologists agree that Earth’s atmosphere was oxygen-free until 2.4 billion years ago. But the latest research from NAI’s Pennsylvania State University team provides new evidence for alternative viewpoints. Ohmoto et al have published their latest results in this week’s Nature. Ohmoto’s team took samples from western Australia as a part of NAI’s Astrobiology Drilling Program.

August 23, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Sulfur Cycling and Snowball Earth

Pennsylvania State University Team members, Matt Hurtgen and colleagues, have just published a new paper in Earth and Planetary Science Letters on continental glaciers in the Neoproterozoic.

August 17, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Energy Conservation: Important Now, Important Then?

An alternative theory for the origin and evolution of life is proposed by scientists from NAI’s Pennsylvania State University Team in the current issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. The theory, centering on the concept that an energy-conservation pathway was the major force which powered and directed the early evolution of the cell, provides insight into the evolution of the microbial production of methane.

May 30, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Ancient Archea, Novel Protein

Researchers from *NAI’s Pennsylvania State University Team *published their functional and phylogenetic analysis of protein WrbA function this week in The Journal of Bacteriology. Comparing 30 sequences including that of Archaeoglobus fulgidus, a hyperthermophilic archeabacterium, this study demonstrates the ability for this enzyme to protect against oxidative stress through quinone oxidoreductase activity.

May 17, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

A History of Venom

Scientists on NAI’s Pennsylvania State University Team published new findings recently in Nature demonstrating a single early origin of the venom system in snakes and lizards. Their molecular biology and toxinological analyses show that the snakes, iguanians and anguimorphs form a single clade, pointing toward the proposed common origin.

May 2, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

A Window into the Subsurface Microbial Population

A new paper this week in PNAS highlights a collaboration between NAI Lead Teams at Penn State, University of Rhode Island, UCLA, and the Marine Biological Laboratory. Their research reveals that heterotrophic Archea dominate the scene in a variety of biogeochemically distinct sedimentary regions, and may constitute a significant portion of the prokaryotic biomass in Earth’s subsurface. Ecosystem-level carbon budgets suggest that community turnover times are on the order of 100-2,000 years.

February 27, 2006 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Update on the Human-Chimpanzee Divergence

Researchers from NAI’s Pennsylvania State University Lead Team and their colleagues at Arizona State University published this week in PNAS their research constraining the divergence of humans and chimpanzees. Using the largest data set yet and improved computational methods for the molecular clock calculations, the study narrows the gap from between 3 and 13 million years ago to between 5 and 7 million years ago.

December 18, 2005 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Further Studies on the Rise of Atmospheric Oxygen

Lee Kump of NAI’s Pennsylvania State University Lead Team is co-author on a new paper in GSA Today examining the rise of atmospheric oxygen at the Archean-Proterozoic transition, 2.5-2.0 billion years ago. The team of international researchers studied sedimentary and volcanic rocks from the Fennoscandian Shield, which provides a fairly complete record of the hallmark events of that transition.

November 28, 2005 / Posted by: Shige Abe

The Evolution of Reptiles and Astrobiology

Researchers from NAI’s Pennsylvania State University Lead Team have conducted the most comprehensive analysis ever performed of the genetic relationships among all the major groups of snakes, lizards and other scaly reptiles. Their paper in C. R. Biologies explains the radical reorganization of this family tree, and the importance to astrobiology.

November 27, 2005 / Posted by: Shige Abe

Increased H2S in the Deep Ocean - Bad News for Life?

NAI scientists on the Penn State and University of Colorado teams published recently in Geology their studies showing that increases in the level of hydrogen sulfide in the deep ocean during oceanic anoxic periods in Earth’s history could cause elevated H2S levels in shallower waters and in the atmosphere. This may have caused, they propose, destruction of the ozone shield and an increase in atmospheric methane, and may have helped spell the end for life at several extinction events.

May 16, 2005 / Posted by: Shige Abe