- The subsurface as an abode
and potential cradle for life's origin on Earth and other bodies in our
solar system
Discussion
Leader: Michael A.
Meyer (Senior Scientist for Astrobiology NASA Headquarters)
Derek R. Lovely (Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst):
Hydrogen-based communities
reducing iron or carbon dioxide on ancient and modern Earth
Jack D. Farmer (Arizona State Univ.):
Exploring
for fossil biosignatures in subsurface hydrothermal deposits
- How late/early could the most
recent common ancestor have lived? Fossil, molecular and geological
evidence
Discussion
Leader: Stephen J.
Mojzsis (University of
Colorado, Boulder):
All extant life is the product of billions of years of coupled
biological and geological evolution, yet all biological organisms have a
common and ancient pedigree as revealed in molecular phylogenetic
studies. When did continuous biological evolution emerge? How can
we determine when (or if) the Last Universal Common Ancestor ever lived?
Christopher H. House (Pennsylvania State University):
What do
gene sequences say about the antiquity of life?
Roger E. Summons (Massachusetts Institute of Technology):
Molecular
signatures of Late Archean biota
Mark A. van Zuilen (Scripps Inst. Ocean./CRPG-Nancy): LINK
Tracing
life in the earliest terrestrial rock record
- Weird Life - possible
alternative chemistries for extraterrestrial life LINK
Discussion
Leader: James P. Ferris (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
The speakers will give presentations that present new and unorthodox theories
for the origins of life. These theories are so "off the wall"
that the Chair considers them to be "weird". They are
guaranteed to expand the listeners horizons when they consider the origins of
life.
Steven A. Benner (Univ. of Florida):
Beyond
speculation. Synthetic organic chemistry to constrain universal biosignatures
and models for the origin of life
Art Weber (SETI Institute):
Life at
the Bottom of an Evolutionary Biogenesis
- The early atmosphere and
early archean environments on Earth
Discussion
Leader: Bruce Runnegar (NASA Astrobiology Institute,
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California)
Two of the presentations will explore the evolution of the atmosphere
on the early Earth in the context of recent discoveries of mass independent
fractionations of sulfur isotopes, the third one will discuss the early
impact history of early Earth.
Gary Byerly (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge): (LINK)
Large
meteor impacts on early Earth
James Farquhar (Univ. of Maryland):
Multiple Sulfur
Isotope analyses: Applications for
the study of the Earth's early atmosphere, early life, and early environments
Alex Pavlov (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder):
Hazy
Archean atmosphere. Impact of organic and sulfur aerosols on the
Archean environment
- Solar and extrasolar planets
Discussion
Leader: Bruce M.
Jakosky (Univ. of
Colorado, Boulder)
This session will provide an update on the detection of extrasolar planets,
discuss and present data on the complex atmospheric and surface
chemistry of Titan-like planets and on detectors that directly measure the
enantiomeric excess of a chiral molecule.
Paul Butler (Carnegie Institution of Washington):
The Near Term
Future of Extrasolar Planet Research
Jack L. Beauchamp (California Institute of Technology):
Exploratory
Studies Related to the Origin and Detection of Life in the Environments of
Solar and Extrasolar Planets
- Extent of lateral gene
transfer in early evolution
Discussion
Leader: Janet L.
Siefert (Rice Univ.)
The Tree of Life predicts a last common ancestor to all life. But, is this tree a true depiction of
organismal evolution and if so, can we understand the nature of the last
common ancestor it implies? This session will report the impact horizontal
gene transfer, rather than vertical transmission, has on our understanding of
the properties and nature of a 'cenancestor' to all life. The three speakers represent different
ends of the opinion spectrum that ranges from a cenancestor that was pretty
much like a modern prokaryote, to one that was described as a progenote (an
organism that existed before a tight coupling between geno- and phenotype),
and from a web-like organismal phylogeny to a more conventional tree of
life.
W. Ford Doolittle (Dalhousie University, Halifax):
If a
Phylogenetic Tree Falls in the Forest ...
Gary Olsen (University of Illinois):
A Tree in
the Jungle of Gene Histories: or, Don't Trip on the Vines
Antonio Lazcano (Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México):
The search
for the last common ancestor: past imperfect?
- Origin and amplification of
biomolecular chirality
Discussion
Leader: Sandra
Pizzarello (Arizona
State Univ.):
The exclusive one-handedness
of amino acids and sugars is essential to the formation, structure, and
function of biopolymers and is a defining molecular trait of terrestrial
life. The emergence and evolution of this asymmetry is not known and remains
a key question for our understanding of the origin of life. Analytical
studies of the last decade have uncovered means of large amplification of
small enantiomeric excesses in molecules, mineral crystals, and dynamic
systems. They will be presented and discussed in their possible relation to
the origin of homochirality.
Kenso Soai (Tokyo University of Science): LINK
Asymmetric
Autocatalysis and The Origins of Chirality
Dilip K. Kondepudi (Wake Forest University):
Origin of
Biomolecular Asymmetry: What do Theory and Experiments Tell Us
- Sequence evolution in the RNA
world and beyond
Discussion
Leader: Donald H. Burke
(Indiana Univ.)
Advances in experimental evolution, a better theoretical understanding of
networks, and the availability of
more than 100 completely sequenced provide a new outlook on sequence
evolution. How did biological
evolution explore sequence and structure space? What were the roles of compartmentalization and
recombination? Was early evolution
fundamentally different from the more the more recent sequence
evolution? How did macromolecules
with novel properties emerge?
Jack W. Szostak (Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical
School):
TBA (RNA in vitro evolution, RNA based RNA
polymerase, linking RNA and protein evolution in vitro)
Peter Schuster (Universität Wien, Austria):
From RNA
sequences to structures and beyond -- evolution in an RNA model
Eugene Koonin (National Center for Biotechnology Information, NLM,
NIH):
Protein evolution
prior to the Last Common Ancestor
- Thursday Evening Lecture:
Louis Lerman
(Pteranodon Ventures and Philipps
University, Marburg, FRG)
“The
Primordial Bubble: Symmetry Breaking and the Origin of Structure.”
LINK A; LINK B
Special Poster and Discussion Sections will focus on
o
"What
organisms were the founding contributors to the eukaryotic cell and what are
the early branching eukaryotes?"
o
Can we determine
the topology and the root of the tree of life in the presence of horizontal
gene transfer?"
o
Prebiotic
Chemistry
o
plus a general poster session
All
posters will be up for the whole conference!
|
