Cold Case: Looking for life on Mars (Forwarded)

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/