Astrobiology Makes Debut Under NASA

With a flourish of the checkbook and a call for research proposals, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has summoned into prominence a virtually new discipline of science: astrobiology. When the principal investigators of the first 11 member organizations in NASA's Astrobiology Institute gathered on June 10-11 in Washington, D.C., no definition of astrobiology had been formally adopted and no director chosen. Many of the members had never met and knew little or nothing of each other's research proposals. But $9 million has been allocated through 1999 for funding of this interdisciplinary experiment, which may herald an important change in NASA's approach to investigating life in the universe. The call for proposals drew 53 responses from universities, research institutes, federal laboratories, private firms, and even five overseas applicants. A panel of 31 independent selectors then chose the institute's member organizations for initial terms of five years. University members are: Harvard University; Pennsylvania State University; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Colorado, Boulder; and Arizona State University. Research institution members are: Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C.; The Scripps Research Institute of La Jolla, Calif.; and Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole, Mass. NASA centers in the institute are: the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, Calif.; Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas; and the Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. The disciplines of individual investigators involved in the institute span biology, chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, and even philosophy. Their areas of research embrace such varying interests as prebiotic environments, RNA catalysis, paleontology, and planet formation. Work will be conducted from their home organizations, but they will communicate by Internet, making this NASA's first "virtual institute." The Ames Research Center, which will house the institute headquarters, is NASA's lead organization in a multi-agency federal initiative to develop the high-speed and advanced networking technologies of the Next Generation Internet. That project will be vital to the exchange among Astrobiology Institute members of highly detailed, visual-based data, much of which cannot be pragmatically downloaded in real time using the current Internet infrastructure. Institute coordinator Gerald Soffen The word "astrobiology" began appearing in academic papers and books in the 1950s (H. Strughold, The Green and Red Planet: a Physiological Study of the Possibility of Life on Mars, London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1954). Talk of an Astrobiology Institute had circulated for years at NASA, says Gerald Soffen , director of university programs at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is coordinating the nascent institute until a director is appointed. Soffen was a project scientist for the Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s. When those missions failed to produce signs of life, public interest and governmental support waned for exobiology, which is the search for life beyond Earth and the study of the effects of extraterrestrial environments on living organisms. "In science you can do three kinds of studies: field studies, lab simulations, or theory," says Robert Hazen, a research scientist in the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C. "But where the real finesse and the art of science come in, is that there are so infinitely many ways of designing and analyzing experiments." That's why the apparent overlap in research projects within NASA's new Astrobiology Institute are, on closer inspection, actually complementary approaches, he explains. The principal investigator in Carnegie's astrobiology program says, "We're interested in the hypothesis that the organic synthesis that led to life got started in deep hydrothermal zones." Oxidation-reduction reactions catalyzed by minerals under extreme pressure in deep-sea vents called "black smokers" may have spontaneously generated the first microbial forms of life. Exactly how such organisms may have come into being is a question that, if answered, could greatly expand the possibilities for the occurrence of life beyond Earth. Scientists at Arizona State University, another institute member, also will be investigating black smokers. However, their approach will be to develop accurate thermal gradients, fluid composition, movement, and other characteristics to produce a laboratory version of a black smoker. Carnegie will continue to follow its traditional approach of deconstructing and analyzing the constituent parts of black smoker chemistry, then slowly recombining them. The two approaches to the problem are respectively "top down" and "bottom up," Hazen notes. "In science, one of the exciting things is the creativity required to develop a workable model that really is just a simple approximation of the immense complexity of nature." Like many other members of the new institute, Hazen thinks its strength lies in the cooperation and the interdisciplinary approach to solving questions about the natural world that it encourages. "Such problems are inherently complex and interdisciplinary, taking into account not only science but politics, economics, and in some cases, religion," he observes. "Take the origin of life. Before life, there was rock, atmosphere, and water. Somehow, between physical and chemical processes, life evolved. I don't know what discipline of science that is." He lauds the assault on insularity in scientific research that he believes the institute represents. "I think what it means is, people will be talking to each other," he says. "The Astrobiology Institute will be looked upon 50 years from now as a renaissance of the innovative thinking that prevailed in science 200 years ago." --S.B. The ensuing quiescent period was broken with the 1996 discovery in Antarctica of a Martian meteorite that possibly held evidence of ancient, fossilized microbes, prompting President Bill Clinton to call for a reconsideration of space science. The NASA office of space science, which already was working on its strategic plan, added a set of missions and enhancements of programs called the Origins Initiative. The grand vision of Origins is to follow the 15-billion-year chain of events from the birth of the universe through the formation of galaxies, and on to the development of life on Earth. One of its main goals is to develop astrobiology, a term deemed wider in scope than exobiology, because it includes both terrestrial and extraterrestrial studies. Wesley T. Huntress Jr. , NASA's departing associate administrator for space science, was offered the Astrobiology Institute directorship but turned it down, precipitating the current search. Adapting phraseology from the Origins Initiative documentation, Soffen offers his working definition of astrobiology: "The study of life in the universe, and the chemistry, physics, and adaptations that influence its origins, evolution, and destiny. It addresses the question, 'Is life a cosmic imperative?''' One possible answer to the "cosmic imperative" question, he notes, is that life on Earth is a unique miracle. "Not many scientists believe that, but in the absence of data, you're stuck with it." Nevertheless, he cautions, "We certainly do not believe we're going to find terrestrial-type life." He would settle for the discovery of extraterrestrial biomarkers: "Something clearly out of chemical equilibrium with everything there." Equivalent examples of such biomarkers on Earth are oxygen and methane, he says, both of which would be in clear disequilibrium in the absence of life. He notes that the rise of astrobiology is connected to NASA's recognition of biology's emergence as a dominant science and the need to include more biologists in space programs. Those themes have been expounded in recent months by NASA administrator Dan Goldin in addresses to symposia and scientific groups, such as the American Astronomical Society. Soffen adds, "Obviously, a focus will be on understanding the planetary setting," but he wants more than that. "I will not consider this a success if after a year, we've only funded 11 independent research projects." His goal: "New discovery. Something that couldn't have been done by any one institution. That's really the smell of success." Latest NASA estimates are that the $9 million for 1999 will rise to between $15 million and $20 million in 2000, although congressional support is expected to depend largely on how effective the Astrobiology Institute is considered to be after its first full year of operation. "I don't know where they're going to get the dollars from," comments Lenny Dawidowicz, administrator of the Marine Biological Laboratory's Center for Advanced Studies in Space Life Sciences. Although he contributed to MBL's successful proposal, his center's NASA funding is unrelated to that of the Astrobiology Institute. Dawidowicz is critical of the cost of the International Space Station, estimated by NASA as requiring at least a $21 billion investment. "It will be the destruction of the agency, because there were some interesting things they could do, but the space station is sucking up all the money." Determining exactly how the institute's pie will be sliced is a first order of business. "What's unclear to me is the difference between what we're going to do and what we proposed," says Mitchell Sogin, laboratory head in the molecular evolution program of MBL. Sogin is principal investigator for MBL's astrobiology research, which will include aspects of his lab's examination of similarities between ribosomal RNAs to estimate the extent of genetic relatedness between eukaryotic microorganisms. However, Sogin offers an example of another part of the multifaceted MBL proposal that was not so well received by the institute's selectors: the evolution of angiotensin. He says the angiotensin II protein is important to adaptation by animals from environments of high gravity to those of lower gravity, as they evolved out of the ocean to live on land. Angiotensin II is a vasodilator that helps the vascular system to cope with the hydrostatic tension caused by changing gravity, and its study therefore is also useful to human space travel. "These are not grants, these are cooperative agreements," he says in describing the process of apportioning funds. "It will be a highly interactive process, to include not only the director of astrobiology and NASA but also other members of the virtual institute, to see if there are other ideas to leverage." How the institute's far-flung organizations will share the data they gather is another key question yet to be fully answered. "Scientists, especially we older ones, tend to be set in our ways," thinks biochemist John Cronin, the acting principal investigator for Arizona State University's astrobiology program. "This will be a more collaborative and less competitive way [of doing science]. It will take open minds and some imagination." ASU's proposal to the institute's selectors covered several broad areas of investigation, including Cronin's specialty, the organic chemistry of carbonaceous meteorites and interplanetary dust particles. ASU boasts a world-class collection of meteorites. Other areas of research by the ASU team include: the processes by which microorganisms become fossilized; the organic chemistry of the deep sea vents called "black smokers"; the evolution of the first photosynthetic systems; and the evolution of ecosystems under differing conditions of energy and nutrient availability. Also, an interdisciplinary group will explore the surfaces of Mars and Europa, the satellite of Jupiter that may harbor an ocean beneath its icy mantle. Neither ASU nor any of the other member organizations can expect to have all their projects funded in the first year, Soffen warns. Cronin says ASU already is paring down its proposal to meet the general funding levels that each member already has been given. "Next, we have to sit down with our brothers and sisters and hammer this out on a whole-institute basis." Bruce Jakosky, a research associate at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, worked with more than two dozen scientists from many disciplines on the university's proposal. "Our decision was to come in as the smallest of the big proposals," he says. NASA has allocated to the university a working figure of $3 million over five years. "Other comparable groups came in at several times that amount." Jakosky agrees that, "People are still trying to feel out what this word 'astrobiology' means." An interdisciplinary scientist on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor mission, Jakosky has a special interest in the current and historical climate on Mars. To him, astrobiology should be less about humans in space or earth science than it is about discovering extraterrestrial life. "No one person is going to conduct an investigation called Finding Life here, but we can each conduct parts of it," he says. "And now we have a vehicle to bring everyone together."

Astrobiology Makes Debut Under NASA

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