New Round of Exo-Evo Grants Awarded

April 27, 2008 / Written by: Linda Billings

NASA’s Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program has made 35 new grant awards for research into the origin and early evolution of life, the potential of life to adapt to different environments, and implications for life elsewhere. Areas of research emphasis in the Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program, one of four elements of the Astrobiology Program, are planetary conditions for life, prebiotic evolution, early evolution of life and the biosphere, and evolution of advanced life.

Planetary conditions for life will be explored by newly funded research projects such as a study of oxygen and climate on habitable planets (Principal Investigator, James Kasting, Penn State University) and a study of Cerro Negro, Nicaragua as an analog for assessing the potential for life on Mars (PI, Brian Hynek, U. Colorado).

Prebiotic evolution is the subject of newly funded projects such as an ongoing study of prebiotic routes to carbohydrates involving borate minerals (PI, Steve Benner, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Inc.) and a study of prebiotic formation of membranes and the role of membranes in energy uptake (PI, Pierre-Alain Monnard, Los Alamos National Laboratory.)

Early evolution of life and the biosphere is the focus of newly funded projects such as one entitled “Leaping to land – physiology and phylogenetics of microscopic desert green algae” (PI, Zoe Cardon, U. Connecticut) and another tagged “The evolution of photosynthesis and the transition from an anaerobic to an aerobic world” (PI, Robert Blankenship, Washington University).