Extreme Life Seminar

When November 17, 2008 (Mon) ~

Where Virtual

November 13, 2008 / Posted by: Estelle Dodson

The November Forum for Astrobiology Research (FAR) will be held on Monday, November 17th at 11:00am PT (9:00am HT, 12:00pm MT, 1:00pm CT, 2:00pm ET). This seminar is broadcast live by NAI – you can attend locally from a videoconferencing room or from your desktop (see instructions below). Please join us to hear presentations on “Extreme Environments” by Jennifer Eigenbrode of Goddard Space Flight Center and Damhnait Gleeson University of Colorado at Boulder and JPL.

Abstracts:

Records of Life in Ice: Opening the Cryogenic Vault
Jennifer Eigenbrode

Ice is a cryogenic vault for preserving organics and other materials that may record planetary processes. On Earth, cold temperatures retard against hydrolysis and oxidation, which degrade biomolecules and other organics, allowing traces of life to persist in the presence of impurities. We are exploring the dilute biological and organic inventory contained within modern glacial ice on Earth in order to understand the habitat of microorganisms in near-surface glacial ice and to distinguish allochthonous from autochthonous organic records. The Signatures of Life in Ice (SLIce) project attempts to overcome the challenges imposed by relatively ideal study conditions in order to support future mission design aimed at detecting organic molecules and ice-dwelling life in extraterrestrial ice. Our study strongly depends on forward contamination controls much like planetary missions. Initial results from ice core samples collected on the Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition (AMASE) will be presented.

An Arctic Analog to Europa: Signs of Life on the Ice”
Damhnait Gleeson

Borup Fiord Pass, located on the Canadian Arctic Island of Ellesmere, represents the only known site on Earth where sulfur minerals and glacial ice are found in intimate association. Spring waters access the surface of the ice during the melt season each year, depositing elemental sulfur, gypsum and calcite and exsolving H2S. The sulfur signature of the spring deposits is extensive enough to be detected and monitored from orbital satellite observations and an autonomous onboard classifier can provide temporal coverage of spring activity. Diverse microbial communities are active within the deposits and are mediating the geochemistry of the deposits by the sulfur redox transformations from which they gain energy. Cultivation experiments targeting sulfide-oxidizing members of the microbial community have isolated microorganisms from the spring deposits which are producing biomineralized sulfur structures in culture.

Borup Fiord Pass represents the closest terrestrial analog for near-term exploration of the icy surface of Europa, providing us with the opportunity to investigate sulfur-on-ice mineralogy in the field for the first time and gain understanding of how the spectral signatures of these kinds of materials vary from field to orbital scales. Microorganisms present at the site are cycling sulfur through different redox states in this cold environment, and the geochemical macrosignature of the springs and their associated deposits is being influenced as a result of metabolic activities of the microcommunity. This work informs the search for biosignatures at icy moons like Europa.

Participation instructions:

To participate using a videoconferencing system such as Polycom….RSVP to Marco Boldt (Marco.Boldt@nasa.gov) and connect to WebEx as instructed below. If you need Polycom help during the live event, you may post a chat to Marco Boldt in WebEx.

The slides from the seminar can be accessed real-time using WebEx at:

https://nasa.webex.com

Enter the meeting number: 924 632 085. Hit the “join now” button.

Enter your name or site name (this is not an assigned log-in name, please use your institution name or your first and last name), email and the password: FAR*2008 (case sensitive)

If you’ve never joined a WebEx meeting before, please allow an extra 5-10 minutes to install the plug-in.

Without a Polycom, you can listen to the seminar on the telephone while viewing the slides in WebEx (see WebEx instructions above). The NASA conference phone number will be displayed when joining WebEx.

You may also watch the audio and video of the presentation using Realmedia player at http://vanseg-1.arc.nasa.gov/2008/AB081117-01.ram. You will need to connect to WebEx to view the slides (see instructions above). There will be a 30-second delay with Realmedia, so you will need to manually advance the slides in WebEx.