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Project Reports

• Chemical Investigations of Hydrogen Cyanide Polymers and Their Possible Role in the Origin of Protein/Nucleic Acid Based Life (Minard)

  ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 3.1 3.2 3.4

• RNA Activities Relevant to Ribocytes

  ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 1.1 3.1 3.2 3.4 6.2

• Project 4. Prebiotic Molecular Selection and Organization

  Studies in molecular self-organization continued to focus on amphiphilic molecules, which are molecules that possess both hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions. These molecules tend to self-organize spontaneously in an aqueous environment.

  ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 3.1 3.2 3.4 4.1 7.1

• Origin of Multicellularity and Complex Land-Based Ecosystem

  ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 3.4 4.1 4.2 5.2

• Early Metabolic Pathways

  In the effort to understand the evolutionary origins of functional biological macromolecules we have evolved, for the first time, a new enzyme having a catalytic activity that has not been observed in nature. The ability to evolve novel enzymatic activities from relatively small libraries of randomized sequences suggests that the evolution of functional proteins may not have been a difficult or slow stage in the early evolution of life.

  ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 3.2 3.4

• Prebiotic Organics From Space

  ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 1.1 3.1 3.4 4.3 7.1 7.2

• Laboratory Microbial Simulations (House)

  ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 3.4 4.1 5.1 5.2 7.2

• Molecular Survey of Microbial Diversity in Hypersaline Ecosystems

  ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 3.1 3.2 3.4 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1

• Characterizing the Mineral Phases in Placozoans

  ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 3.4 4.2

• Philosophical Issues in Astrobiology

  ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 3.1 3.2 3.4 4.1 5.1 5.2