The evolution of habitable conditions on Mars is often tied to the existence of aquatic habitats and largely constrained to the first billion years of the planet. Here, we propose an alternate, ...lasting evolutionary trajectory that assumes the colonization of land habitats before the end of the Hesperian period (ca. 3 billion years ago) at a pace similar to life on Earth. Based on the ecological adaptations to increasing dryness observed in dryland ecosystems on Earth, we reconstruct the most likely sequence of events leading to a late extinction of land communities on Mars. We propose a trend of ecological change with increasing dryness from widespread edaphic communities to localized lithic communities and finally to communities exclusively found in hygroscopic substrates, reflecting the need for organisms to maximize access to atmospheric sources of water. If our thought process is correct, it implies the possibility of life on Mars until relatively recent times, perhaps even the present.
The Atacama Desert, northern Chile, is one of the driest deserts on Earth and, as such, a natural laboratory to explore the limits of life and the strategies evolved by microorganisms to adapt to ...extreme environments. Here we report the exceptional adaptation strategies of chlorophototrophic and eukaryotic algae, and chlorophototrophic and prokaryotic cyanobacteria to the hyperarid and extremely high solar radiation conditions occurring in this desert. Our approach combined several microscopy techniques, spectroscopic analytical methods, and molecular analyses. We found that the major adaptation strategy was to avoid the extreme environmental conditions by colonizing cryptoendolithic, as well as, hypoendolithic habitats within gypsum deposits. The cryptoendolithic colonization occurred a few millimeters beneath the gypsum surface and showed a succession of organized horizons of algae and cyanobacteria, which has never been reported for endolithic microbial communities. The presence of cyanobacteria beneath the algal layer, in close contact with sepiolite inclusions, and their hypoendolithic colonization suggest that occasional liquid water might persist within these sub-microhabitats. We also identified the presence of abundant carotenoids in the upper cryptoendolithic algal habitat and scytonemin in the cyanobacteria hypoendolithic habitat. This study illustrates that successful lithobiontic microbial colonization at the limit for microbial life is the result of a combination of adaptive strategies to avoid excess solar irradiance and extreme evapotranspiration rates, taking advantage of the complex structural and mineralogical characteristics of gypsum deposits-conceptually called "rock's habitable architecture." Additionally, self-protection by synthesis and accumulation of secondary metabolites likely produces a shielding effect that prevents photoinhibition and lethal photooxidative damage to the chlorophototrophs, representing another level of adaptation.
In this paper, we examine a restricted subset of the question of possible alien biochemistries. That is, we look into how different life might be if it emerged in environments similar to that ...required for life on Earth. We advocate a principle of chance and necessity in biochemistry. According to this principle, biochemistry is in some fundamental way the sum of two processes: there is an aspect of biochemistry that is an endowment from prebiotic processes, which represents the necessity, plus an aspect that is invented by the process of evolution, which represents the chance. As a result, we predict that life originating in extraterrestrial Earth-like environments will share biochemical motifs that can be traced back to the prebiotic world but will also have intrinsic biochemical traits that are unlikely to be duplicated elsewhere as they are combinatorially path-dependent. Effective and objective strategies to search for biomarkers, and evidence for a second genesis, on planets with Earth-like environments can be built based on this principle.
The search for extraterrestrial extant or extinct life in our Solar System will require highly capable instrumentation and methods for detecting low concentrations of biosignatures. This paper ...introduces the Supercritical CO2 and Subcritical H2O Analysis (SCHAN) instrument, a portable and automated system that integrates supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), and subcritical water extraction coupled with liquid chromatography. The instrument is compact and weighs 6.3 kg, making it suitable for spaceflight missions to planetary bodies. Traditional techniques, such as gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (MS), face challenges with involatile and thermally labile analytes, necessitating derivatization. The SCHAN instrument, however, eliminates the need for derivatization and cosolvents by utilizing neat supercritical CO2 with water as an additive. This SFE-SFC-MS method gives efficient lipid biosignature separations with median detection limits of 10 pg/g (ppt) for fatty acids and 50 pg/g (ppt) for sterols. Several free fatty acids and cholesterol were among the detected peaks in biologically lean samples from the Atacama Desert, demonstrating the instrument’s potential for in situ life detection missions. The SCHAN instrument addresses the challenges of conventional systems, offering a compact, portable, and spaceflight-compatible tool for the analysis of organics for future astrobiology-focused missions.
Astrobiology of life on Earth Hallsworth, John E.; Mancinelli, Rocco L.; Conley, Catharine A. ...
Environmental microbiology,
July 2021, Letnik:
23, Številka:
7
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Summary
Astrobiology is mistakenly regarded by some as a field confined to studies of life beyond Earth. Here, we consider life on Earth through an astrobiological lens. Whereas classical studies of ...microbiology historically focused on various anthropocentric sub‐fields (such as fermented foods or commensals and pathogens of crop plants, livestock and humans), addressing key biological questions via astrobiological approaches can further our understanding of all life on Earth. We highlight potential implications of this approach through the articles in this Environmental Microbiology special issue ‘Ecophysiology of Extremophiles’. They report on the microbiology of places/processes including low‐temperature environments and chemically diverse saline‐ and hypersaline habitats; aspects of sulphur metabolism in hypersaline lakes, dysoxic marine waters, and thermal acidic springs; biology of extremophile viruses; the survival of terrestrial extremophiles on the surface of Mars; biological soils crusts and rock‐associated microbes of deserts; subsurface and deep biosphere, including a salticle formed within Triassic halite; and interactions of microbes with igneous and sedimentary rocks. These studies, some of which we highlight here, contribute to our understanding of the spatiotemporal reach of Earth'sfunctional biosphere, and the tenacity of terrestrial life. Their findings will help set the stage for future work focused on the constraints for life, and how organisms adapt and evolve to circumvent these constraints.
Many features of the Martian landscape are thought to have been formed by liquid water flow and water-related mineralogies on the surface of Mars are widespread and abundant. Several lines of ...evidence, however, suggest that Mars has been cold with mean global temperatures well below the freezing point of pure water. Martian climate modellers considering a combination of greenhouse gases at a range of partial pressures find it challenging to simulate global mean Martian surface temperatures above 273 K, and local thermal sources cannot account for the widespread distribution of hydrated and evaporitic minerals throughout the Martian landscape. Solutes could depress the melting point of water in a frozen Martian environment, providing a plausible solution to the early Mars climate paradox. Here we model the freezing and evaporation processes of Martian fluids with a composition resulting from the weathering of basalts, as reflected in the chemical compositions at Mars landing sites. Our results show that a significant fraction of weathering fluids loaded with Si, Fe, S, Mg, Ca, Cl, Na, K and Al remain in the liquid state at temperatures well below 273 K. We tested our model by analysing the mineralogies yielded by the evolution of the solutions: the resulting mineral assemblages are analogous to those actually identified on the Martian surface. This stability against freezing of Martian fluids can explain saline liquid water activity on the surface of Mars at mean global temperatures well below 273 K.
Perchlorate (ClO4−) is widespread in Martian soils at concentrations between 0.5 and 1%. At such concentrations, perchlorate could be an important source of oxygen, but it could also become a ...critical chemical hazard to astronauts. In this paper, we review the dual implications of ClO4− on Mars, and propose a biochemical approach for removal of perchlorate from Martian soil that would be energetically cheap, environmentally friendly and could be used to obtain oxygen both for human consumption and to fuel surface operations.
The hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert is considered the dry limit for life on Earth. Soils in this region have very low abundance of heterotrophic bacteria and are practically barren of ...photosynthetic microorganisms because of the extreme dry conditions (≤2 mm a−1 rainfall). However, relatively abundant endolithic communities of cyanobacteria (Chroococcidiopsis) occur within halite crusts in paleolake evaporitic deposits. By means of continuous monitoring of the microclimate conditions (temperature, relative humidity, water vapor density, wetness, and photosynthetically active radiation) inside and around the halite crusts, we demonstrate here that water vapor condenses within the pore space of the halite at relative humidity (RH) levels that otherwise hinder the occurrence of liquid water in the surrounding environment. Water condensation occurs at RH >75%, which corresponds to the deliquescence point of halite. We have estimated a total of 57 deliquescence events (i.e., water condensation) within the halite crusts, as opposed to only 1 liquid water event outside. These wet events resulted in a total of 213.8 h of potential photosynthetic activity for the endolithic microorganisms versus only 6 h for organisms outside the halite crusts. Halite crusts may therefore represent the last available niche for photosynthetic activity in extreme arid environments on Earth.
Evidence suggests that Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus has a subsurface ocean that sources plumes of water vapor and ice vented to space from its south pole. In situ analyses of this material by the ...Cassini spacecraft have shown that the ocean contains key ingredients for life (elements H, C, N, O and possibly S; simple and complex organic compounds; chemical disequilibria at water-rock interfaces; clement temperature, pressure, and pH). The Cassini discoveries make Enceladus’ interior a prime locale for life detection beyond Earth. Scant material exchange with the inner Solar System makes it likely that such life would have emerged independently of life on Earth. Thus, its discovery would illuminate life’s universal characteristics. The alternative result of an upper bound on a detectable biosphere in an otherwise habitable environment would likewise considerably advance our understanding of the prevalence of life beyond Earth. Here we outline the rationale for returning vented ocean samples, accessible from Enceladus’ surface or low altitudes, to Earth for life detection. Returning samples allows analyses using laboratory instruments that cannot be flown, with decades or more to adapt and repeat analyses. We describe an example set of measurements to estimate the amount of sample to be returned and discuss possible mission architectures and collection approaches. We then turn to the challenges of preserving sample integrity and implementing planetary protection policy. We conclude by placing such a mission in the broader context of Solar System exploration.
Natural perchlorate (ClO4−) is of increasing interest due to its wide-spread occurrence on Earth and Mars, yet little information exists on the relative abundance of ClO4− compared to other major ...anions, its stability, or long-term variations in production that may impact the observed distributions. Our objectives were to evaluate the occurrence and fate of ClO4− in groundwater and soils/caliche in arid and semi-arid environments (southwestern United States, southern Africa, United Arab Emirates, China, Antarctica, and Chile) and the relationship of ClO4− to the more well-studied atmospherically deposited anions NO3− and Cl− as a means to understand the prevalent processes that affect the accumulation of these species over various time scales. ClO4− is globally distributed in soil and groundwater in arid and semi-arid regions on Earth at concentrations ranging from 10−1 to 106μg/kg. Generally, the ClO4− concentration in these regions increases with aridity index, but also depends on the duration of arid conditions. In many arid and semi-arid areas, NO3− and ClO4− co-occur at molar ratios (NO3−/ClO4−) that vary between ∼104 and 105. We hypothesize that atmospheric deposition ratios are largely preserved in hyper-arid areas that support little or no biological activity (e.g. plants or bacteria), but can be altered in areas with more active biological processes including N2 fixation, N mineralization, nitrification, denitrification, and microbial ClO4− reduction, as indicated in part by NO3− isotope data. In contrast, much larger ranges of Cl−/ClO4− and Cl−/NO3− ratios indicate Cl− varies independently from both ClO4− and NO3−. The general lack of correlation between Cl− and ClO4− or NO3− implies that Cl− is not a good indicator of co-deposition and should be used with care when interpreting oxyanion cycling in arid systems. The Atacama Desert appears to be unique compared to all other terrestrial locations having a NO3−/ClO4− molar ratio ∼103. The relative enrichment in ClO4− compared to Cl− or NO3− and unique isotopic composition of Atacama ClO4− may reflect either additional in-situ production mechanism(s) or higher relative atmospheric production rates in that specific region or in the geological past. Elevated concentrations of ClO4− reported on the surface of Mars, and its enrichment with respect to Cl− and NO3−, could reveal important clues regarding the climatic, hydrologic, and potentially biologic evolution of that planet. Given the highly conserved ratio of NO3−/ClO4− in non-biologically active areas on Earth, it may be possible to use alterations of this ratio as a biomarker on Mars and for interpreting major anion cycles and processes on both Mars and Earth, particularly with respect to the less-conserved NO3− pool terrestrially.
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