By Aditi Sharma From the climate crisis to the current global pandemic, our Earth faces significant threats. This has led many people to criticize space exploration, emphasizing instead that before looking to the stars we should focus on the issues on the planet we live on. It seems that many believe investing in space signifies a severe lack of commitment to improving the Earth. However, such an argument fails to address how space exploration has already benefited modern society and […]

Dr. Rika Anderson specializes in questions concerning the evolution of microbial life with its environment. She is currently an assistant professor at Carleton College in the Biology department, but her lab collaborates with scientists across disciplines to connect biology with astronomy, geology, oceanography, and atmospheric sciences. Her current lab uses bioinformatic techniques to look at microbial and viral evolution in hydrothermal vent environments, investigating how these microbial species arise, spread, and adapt to new environments by looking at their genetic […]

Dr. Zach Adam is interested in origins of life questions, with particular regard for the origin of eukaryotic life. He is currently a staff scientist at Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona and a member of the Kacar Research Group, where he specializes in chemical and geological investigations of early life. He works mainly with Precambrian microfossils and conducts experiments with radiolysis reactions, which involve using alpha, beta, or gamma radiation to form complex molecules important for […]

Dr. Betül Kaçar uses a unique biochemical and phylogenetic approach to study questions about the origins of life. She and her team at the University of Arizona use phylogenetic tree algorithms to infer the ancestral sequences of modern genes. They focus particularly on the genes of essential enzymes that are common across the domains of life. Once derived, they synthesize these hypothesized ancient genes and insert them in modern bacteria to observe how the ancient forms of enzymes affect the […]

Our friends at the European Astrobiology Institute have announced the first Biennial European Astrobiology Conference (BEACON)! The conference will take place on La Palma Island, in the Canaries, Spain, from 20 through 24 April 2020. Registration, abstract submission, and accommodation booking are now open for this meeting. It will take place at La Palma & Teneguia Princess Hotel on La Palma Island. The scientific sessions are currently planned to cover the following themes: Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems and Detection […]

Star Trek: Voyager, Science, and Catholicism Guest post by Rebecca Salcedo, one of our current Young Scientist Program (YSP) participants. Rebecca has an undergraduate degree in molecular environmental biology from UC Berkeley and is currently a Masters student in microbiology at San Francisco State University. She’s a current BMSIS YSP at NASA Ames where she’s working with Dr. Alfonso Davila and Dr. Paul Wilburn on a project considering how life could develop and thrive on Mars by studying microbes from the […]