2/19/2009
How Life Began??
Comparative
How Life Began??
Sidney Fox
1912-1998
responsible for unique
discoveries in the
autosynthesis of protocells
• Darwin’s theory addresses the idea of a
common ancestor and how life forms
change due to natural selection.
• It does not address how life got started
started.
• “There is grandeur in this view of life, with
its several powers, having been
originally breathed into a few forms or
into one,…”
Sidney Fox
• In 1943 Fox was granted his first academic position at
Iowa State College.
• In 1955 Fox assumed the directorship of the
Oceanographic Institute at Florida State University.
Beginning in 1964, Fox served as director of the Institute
f Molecular
for
M l
l and
dC
Cellular
ll l Evolution
E l ti (IMCE) att the
th
University of Miami. During this time, his laboratory was
involved in studying some of the first moon rocks brought
back by the Apollo missions.
• After more than three decades in Florida, Fox moved to
Southern Illinois University in 1989, and then on to the
University of South Alabama in 1993.
Sidney Fox
Sidney Fox
• Arguably Sidney Fox's best-known research was
conducted in the 1950s and 1960s, when he
studied the spontaneous formation of protein
structures. His early work demonstrated that
under certain conditions amino acids could
spontaneously form small peptides—the first
step on the road to the assembly of large
proteins. The result was significant because his
experimental conditions duplicated conditions
that might plausibly have existed early in Earth's
history.
• Further work revealed that these amino acids
and small peptides could be encouraged to form
closed spherical membranes, called
microspheres. Fox has gone so far as to
describe these formations as protocells, protein
spheres that could grow and reproduce. They
might be an important intermediate step in the
origin of life. Microspheres might have served as
a stepping stone between simple organic
compounds and genuine living cells.
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2/19/2009
Microspheres
Protocells
Sidney Fox
NASA: ASTROBIOLOGY
• For the last five years of his career Fox continued to
explore the beginning of life in the basement of LSCB.
• To my knowledge nothing grew within his microspheres,
mutated, changed, crawled out off a fish
f
tank and
subsequently enrolled in any courses at USA!
• However, Astrobiology, as a field, had been launch!
ASTROBIOLOGY
• 20.07 | SCIENCE:
Astrobiotechnology Chip Successfully Launched
Andrew Steele of NAI's CIW Team, a leader in
astrobiotechnology for many years, is behind this current
experiment, called the "Life Marker Chip." A collection of
immunoassays which have the potential to detect trace
levels of biomarkers in the Martian environment, it
launched earlier this week on ESA's BIOPAN 6
experiment platform. The craft will spend 12 days in
orbit, during which time the onboard experiments,
including the Chip, will be exposed to microgravity.
ASTROBIOLOGY
• 7.30.07 | SCIENCE:
Looking for Life in All the Right Places
This new video from JPL shows how
NASA astrobiologists are gathering
exciting clues that will help them pick the
best spots to search for possible signs of
life beyond Earth.
2
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2/19/2009
ASTROBIOLOGY
8.6.07 | SCIENCE:
Exoplanet Water Vapor and Weird Life
A new article in the Wall Street Journal
ties together new discoveries from the
frontiers of astrobiology science. The
author speculates that "Our knowledge of
the universe we call home -- and the
search for water worlds hospitable to life
-- is expanding almost as quickly as the
cosmos itself."
ASTROBIOLOGY
• 8.6.07 | SCIENCE:
Hydrocarbons on Saturn's Moon Hyperion
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed for the
first time surface details of Saturn's moon
Hyperion, including cup-like craters filled with
hydrocarbons that may indicate more
widespread presence in our solar system of
basic chemicals necessary for life.
ASTROBIOLOGY
ASTROBIOLOGY
• 7.24.07 | SCIENCE:
Astrobiologist Named "Genius Who will
Change Your Life"
Maggie Turnbull, a 2004 NAI Postdoctoral
Fellow and now an astrobiologist at the Space
Telescope Science Institute, was recently
named a "Genius" by CNN for her work
cataloging stars most likely to develop planets
that could support life and intelligent civilizations.
Congratulations Maggie!
• 6.21.07 | SCIENCE:
The meaning of life,
(Carl Zimmer) - Science blogger Carl Zimmer addresses
the past, present, and future of origins of life research
and the intersection of science and philosophy in this
field of study; as well as the scientific search for
evidence of extraterrestrial life in the solar system; and
scientific definitions of life, or the lack thereof. The
work of philosophy professor Carol Cleland, a member of
the NASA Astrobiology Institute's University of Colorado
Center for Astrobiology team, is a prominent element of
the story.
ASTROBIOLOGY
• 7.30.07 | SCIENCE:
Seeing Our Reflection
This new article from Science & Spirit
magazine cogitates on 'following
following the water'
water
in the search for life elsewhere, and the
relationship between water and
enlightenment in mythology and human
psychology.
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2/19/2009
• Science & Spirit Mission Statement: Our
mission is to facilitate a rich and robust
dialogue between the scientific and
religious communities by forging a
common vocabulary. We intend the result
to be a more integrated and balanced
approach to complex social issues.
• The following operating principles guide
us:
• — Science can be enabling and liberating.
— Values provide a path to human
integrity.
— Religious traditions should provide
bridges between science and values.
• Charles Townes, Nobel laureate, 2005
Templeton Prize winner, and inventor of
the maser and laser, has been a leading
advocate for the convergence of science
and religion since 1966, when he wrote a
seminal article on the subject for IBM's
THINK magazine.
• In Science & Spirit magazine's JanuaryFebruary 2006 issue, he updates his
experiences with physics and faith, and
describes the "revelation"
revelation that was the
origin of the maser. For Townes, there is
no question that science and religion will
eventually come together because they
are "merely two ways of looking at life and
the universe; it follows that, in the long run,
they will see the same thing."
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