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Origins Center – Startimpuls and beyond
Frank Helmich – chairman Route 4 NWA (Het ontstaan van het leven: op
aarde en in het heelal)/Origins Center
Origins Center
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Origins Center is the outcome of the Route 4 discussions of 2016
It is a virtual Center with science around Origins and Evolution questions
Main topics for interdisciplinary research are 5 “gamechangers”
1) Reconstruct the origin of the Earth and life
2) Predict the evolution of life
3) Build and steer life from molecule to biosphere
4) Find life outside of the Earth
5) Bridge large temporal and spatial scales, (crucial for the first four game
changers)
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How to shape the center and how to arrange the governance? -> design study
How to build a sustainable community that profits from new possibilities in the
NWA? -> workshops as a start
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How to build a community?
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Our community consists of molecular biosciences, biophysics, ecology,
chemistry, earth sciences, mathematics, computer science and astronomy
Involvement of Universities of Groningen, Twente, Nijmegen, Utrecht, Amsterdam
(VU & UvA), Leiden, Wageningen, Delft, Eindhoven, Rotterdam.
NWO/KNAW/other institutes: NIOO, NIOZ, Naturalis, CWI, SRON, AMOLF, NKI
All in all 700(?) tenured scientists
How to exploit the strengths and assets we can bring to bear on the five
challenges:
• Strong groups in all relevant disciplines
• Proximity – distances in NL are small
• Existing networks and programmes (building blocks of life, planetary &
exoplanetary science, .....)
• Specific strengths related to (big) research infrastructure and
instruments (which ones?)
• Society taking an interest in the research problems that we have adopted
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Startimpuls
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Ministry of OCW has put aside between 6 and 7M€ for Theme 3: Hoe kan
natuurwetenschappelijke kennis bijdragen aan vernieuwing? Three Routes can
apply for this money: Route 4, Route 5 on fundamentals of time and space and
the route on Quantum/nano-revolution
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Before end of April the core group will have to come up with a proposal of
approximately 2.5 M€, to be spent within 3 years. This is very little money for so
many scientists, but it makes further development of the Center possible.
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Originally we thought that the workshops were too late to provide input. But since
the call is late, we value your input. Deadline for the proposal is June 15.
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What can be in the proposal? Postdocs, PhD students, fieldlabs, conferences and
workshops. Workvisits in NL from Dutch and external scientists etc. etc.
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Today
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The overall aim of the workshop is to produce clear research objectives for this
gamechanger and a long-term plan to achieve these objectives that is scalable to
the available money.
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The workshop is set up to enable a bottom up process, first to explore the
foremost areas of research to advance this gamechanger (morning), then to
synthesize these ideas into about four research questions, which are widely
recognized as key questions (early afternoon), and finally to prioritize these
questions scalable to available time and resources (late afternoon).
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We need to identify the links between the disciplines where research should be
done and strengthen existing ones and build up new ones
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Fundamentals of Life in the Universum
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August 31 and September 1 in Groningen
http://www.origins-symposium.nl
Send it to your Dutch and foreign colleagues!
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Ignas Snellen, Leiden Observatory, Leiden University
Rocky planets around nearby low-mass stars, which may have similar climates as Earth
August 2016
February 2017
O2
à Atmospheric characterization
[Funding sources: VICI; ERC-S; ERC-A; NWO-PEPSci / TOP, NOVA]
à Instrumentation – JWST/E-ELT
[MIRI –JWST (co-I), METIS/E-ELT (PI)]
à Technology development – coronagraphy/adaptive optics
[EPICS/E-ELT (PI?) – KNAW roadmap; NOVA, ERC-S]
JWST (2018)
E-ELT (2024)
Bert Vermeersen, Aerospace Engineering, TU Delft
Source:ESA,JUICEYellow Book
How habitable was and is Mars?
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Radiation
Water
Atmosphere
Geochemistry
• water history: pH, salinity
• CHNOPS
• atmosphere history
MSL
ExoMars
Future technologies
• Drilling into the subsurface
• Cave research
• Life Marker Chips
Most likely the ocean in Jupiter’s
moon Europa alone already
contains more water than Earth’s
oceans ……….
(Sources NASA/JPL [Galileo] & ESA JUICE Yellow Book)
• Search for Extinct vs. Existing Life and Habitats? What to look for?
• Are there any unique signatures for extraterrestrial life? Unique
biomarkers?
• Or only from circumstantial combinations of scientific disciplines
and observations?
• Are the four elements water / elements / energy / stability enough
for life to form and evolve? (ionizing radiation? magnetic fields?
….?)
• Is life on Earth characteristic for extraterrestrial life forms?
• How to recognise / deal with temporal evolution of habitats?
• How does life influence its habitat and surroundings, and vice
versa? (e.g., atmospheres for surface habitats / impurities on
surface ice for deep habitats)
Paul Mason, Earth Sciences, Utrecht University
- When did life begin on Earth?
- How rapidly did the terrestrial (microbial) biosphere evolve?
- Did geological constraints prevent more rapid biological evolution?
- Can we develop more robust biosignatures for distant (exo)planets?
- How do we interpret planetary atmospheres?
- Can we identify the geology of distant (exo)planets?
WhatisthecurrentconsensusfortheappearanceoflifeonEarth?
+++convincing++presumptive+permissive
Complex
Life
OxygenationoftheOceans
1.9
+++
+++
+++
Earth
Evolution(?)
Oxygenationoftheatmosphere
++
2.7
+++(C,S,N)
3.5
++(C,S)
++
3.8
+(C)
++
4.2
+(C)
Stable
Isotopes
++/+++
Molecular
Biomarkers
Microfossils/
Stromatolites
Prokaryote
Evolution
Originof
Life
Anoxia
Firstmicrobialbiosphere
OxicsurfaceEarth
Richandcomplexbiology
Lyons&Reinhoud,Nature,2009
Lyonsetal.,Nature, 2015
Tools for tracing life in rocks/ atmospheres:
- More definitive biosignatures
terrestrial & astrobiological
- Conceptual, laboratory and field testing
- Better links to missions/ spectroscopy
- Limits of life: Extremophiles
- Life/planet interactions
- Preservation of biosignatures
- Abiotic baseline testing
Planetary Terrestrial
- Origin of life
- Boundary conditions for life
- Evolutionary timescales
- Biosignature calibration
- Terrestrial analogues
(Micro)biology
Chemistry
Astronomy
Planetary Science
Geosciences
Field studies
Computational sciences
Laboratory studies
Physics
Lucas Patty, VU & Jan de Leeuw, NIOZ
Top down approach:
Life as we know it
Minimal life as we expect it
Self-replicating systems (eg RNA,PNA)
Primordial organic molecules
Life as
we don’t
know it
If we want to search for life beyond Earth, we first have to
understand life on Earth: it wasn’t until the introduction of
molecular ecology that biologists discovered a lot of extreme
environments were not sterile..
If we can’t find life as we know it
right in front of us, how can we
find life that is unfamiliar?
Kawah Ijen,Indonesian Crater
Lake, pH 0.2, Temp. 30-55oC
P/T/pH boundaries for
terrestrial life (Harrison 2013)
Possible variations on DNA, using
different sugars, backbones and
bases (Pinheiro & Holliger 2012)
In a more distant feature, reflectance spectra
might be taken of distant worlds, containing a
direct signatures of surface life: the so called
‘red edge’, which is pigment dependent.
Bacterial reflectance,
(Hegde 2015)
Koninklijk
Royal
Netherlands
Nederlands
Institute
Instituut
for Sea
voorResearch
Zeeonderzoek
The origin of life, on Earth and Elsewhere
Jan W. de Leeuw
- NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Texel NL
- Utrecht University, Utrecht NL
NIOZ is an institute of
in cooperation with
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Conditions for life on Earth and other Goldilocks planets
1) A continuous supply of reactive carbon for synthesizing
new organics;
2) A supply of free energy to drive metabolic biochemistry –
the formation of new proteins, DNA, and so on;
3) Catalysts to speed up and channel these metabolic
reactions;
4) Excretion of waste, to pay the debt to the second law of
thermodynamics and drive chemical reactions in the
correct direction;
5) Compartmentalisation – a cell-like structure that separates
the inside from the outside;
6) Hereditary material – RNA, DNA or an equivalent, to
specify the detailed form and function.
Nick Lane in: ‘The vital question’, W.W. Norton & Company (2015)
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Animals
FPE
First
Eukaryote
Bacteria
Archaea
LUCA
Chemical Evolution
?? viruses??
a.o. sugars, peptides, RNA, lipids
Polymerization
a.o. ribose, amino acids, CO, CH4, pyruvate, acetylphosphate (“ATP”)
N2, H2S
Fe-, Ni-, Mo-sulfides
1) formose reaction, 2) “abiotic” Wood-Ljungdal pathway
CH2O
Strong pH gradient
CO2
3 Fe2Si04 + 2 Mg2SiO4 + 5H2O à 2 H2 + 2 Fe3O4 + 3 SiO2 + Mg(OH)2 + Mg3Si2O5
olivine
magnetite
Big Bang
brucite
serpentinite
Anoxic Hydrothermal Vents
Biological Evolution
Ocean, Continents
The super tree of life
Algae, plants
CO2 + H2
“spontaneous”
CH2O in HTV-chimneys
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Herschy et.al J. Mol. Evol. 79:213-227 (2014)
Catalytic surfaces in HTV-chimney ‘cells’
Co-factor
Ferredoxin
HTV minerals
CO-dehydrogenase/
acetyl synthase
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Michael Russell, American Scientist, 94: 32-39 (2006)
Animals
FPE
First
Eukaryote
Bacteria
Archaea
LUCA
Chemical Evolution
?? viruses??
a.o. sugars, peptides, RNA, lipids
Polymerization
a.o. ribose, amino acids, CO, CH4, pyruvate, acetylphosphate (“ATP”)
N2, H2S
Fe-, Ni-, Mo-sulfides
1) formose reaction, 2) “abiotic” Wood-Ljungdal pathway
CH2O
Strong pH gradient
CO2
3 Fe2Si04 + 2 Mg2SiO4 + 5H2O à 2 H2 + 2 Fe3O4 + 3 SiO2 + Mg(OH)2 + Mg3Si2O5
olivine
magnetite
Big Bang
brucite
serpentinite
Anoxic Hydrothermal Vents
Biological Evolution
Ocean, Continents
The super tree of life
Algae, plants
Big Bang
Door NASA/WMAP
Science Team http://map.gsfc.nasa
.gov/media/060915/i
ndex.html
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Genetic reconstruction of LUCA
6.1 x 106 genes
355 protein
families present in
both bacteria and
archaea phyla
LUCA:
Anaerobic, CO2fixing, WLpathway, N2-fixing,
à la Clostridia
(bacteria)
and
methanogens
(archaea)
In Hydrothermal
vents
Weiss et. al, Nature Microbiology 2016.116
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definition of questions and themes
• long-term overarching themes (what is the big question)
• what are the first steps (achievable within StartImpuls
and other short term funding)
• what are longer term goals
POST-ITS!