Carnegie Institution of Washington
Washington, D.C.

Carnegie contacts:

Marilyn Fogel, 202-478- 8981
Andrew Steele, 202-793-1247
Marc Fries, 202-478-8993

March 22, 2006

Cold Case: Looking for life on Mars

Washington, D.C. -- Evidence never dies in the popular TV show Cold
Case. Nor do some traces of life disappear on Earth, Mars, or elsewhere.
An international team of scientists[*], including researchers from the
Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, has developed techniques
to detect miniscule amounts of biological remains, dubbed biosignatures,
in the frozen Mars-like terrain of Svalbard, a island north of Norway.
This technology will be used on future life-search missions to the Red
Planet. The work is presented in several talks at NASA's Astrobiology
Science Conference (AbSciCon) 2006 at the Ronald Reagan Building in
Washington, D.C., March 26-30. See http://abscicon2006.arc.nasa.gov/ for
details.

"It might seem like we're looking for a needle in a haystack," remarked
Carnegie researcher Marilyn Fogel. [1] "But it's much better than that.
One of our studies showed that we can detect even the most minute
amounts of the element nitrogen, which can be evidence of life.
Interestingly, rocks might be particularly promising places to find
traces left by the tiniest microbes. Svalbard is brittle cold, very dry,
and rocky, much like the Martian environment, making it an excellent
test bed."

Nitrogen is essential to DNA, RNA, and protein. All life depends on it.
The scientists looked at how a certain type, or isotope, of nitrogen was
distributed in soils, water, rocks, plants, and in microbes. They found
that nitrogen quantities varied depending on how the element interacted
with the environment and living organisms. "We found that organisms
leave tell-tale nitrogen fingerprints on rocks, " stated Fogel. "The
technology is well suited for finding remains of life on the rocky
terrain of Mars."

In another study, the group found that they could adapt techniques used
in genetic laboratories to the field. [2] They found that DNA sampling
and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method -- which makes many
copies of a specific segment of DNA for analysis -- can detect genetic
differences in rock-dwelling communities of blue-green algae
(cyanobacteria) and fungi. Further, they identified over 90 different
compounds that can be correlated to biosignatures of those life forms.
These fingerprints will be part of an enormous library of signatures to
which Martian samples can be compared in the search for life.

Talk and poster schedule subject to change. See
http://abscicon2006.arc.nasa.gov/agenda.php for the latest information.

[1] Fogel and AMASE team, "Nitrogen cycling in cold analogue environments"
Monday, March 27th, 10:35
Reagan Center, Horizon A & B conference room, Session 3: Cold Mars
Analogue Environments

[2] Jennifer Eigenbrode, et al., "Biosignatures of arctic organisms from
different rock types"
Poster displayed throughout the conference. Poster session Monday night,
March 27, 2006, 6-8pm
Reagan Center, Atrium Hall.

Rebecca Martin, et al., "Antibody microarrays for real-time monitoring
of microbial environment and astronaut health"
Poster displayed throughout the conference. Poster session Monday night,
March 27, 2006, 6-8pm
Reagan Center, Atrium Hall
[*] The Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition (AMASE) team comes from
the following institutions: lead institution, Physics of Geological
Processes, University of Oslo; The Carnegie Institution of Washington,
Geophysical Laboratory and Department of Terrestrial Magnetism; NASA Jet
Propulsion Laboratory; University of Leeds; University of Oxford;
Universidad de Burgos, Spain; The Smithsonian Institution; Penn State
University; Geological Institute, University of Oslo and Idaho National
Laboratory.

The Carnegie Institution of Washington (www.CarnegieInstitution.org) has
been a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902. It is a
private, nonprofit organization with six research departments throughout
the U.S. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental
biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and
planetary science.

This work is supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI). The
NAI, founded in 1998, is a partnership between NASA, 16 major U.S. teams
and six international consortia. NAI's goal is to promote, conduct, and
lead integrated multidisciplinary astrobiology research and to train a
new generation of astrobiology researchers. For more information about
the NAI on the Internet, visit:
http://nai.nasa.gov/