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Project Progress

Dworkin and collaborators have been active in the lab section of the GCA Astrobiology Team by operating the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory and collaborating with numerous other laboratories. This involves the creation and maintenance of a world-class organic analytical laboratory. His lab was largely created with GCA funds, and Dworkin leveraged them by obtaining internal GSFC funds sufficient to double its space and equipment.

The new addition this year is a gas chromatograph-quadrupole mass spectrometer/isotope ratio mass spectrometer and peripherals. In 2007, Dr. Jamie Elsila Cook was hired as a civil servant to run this instrument and Dr. Jennifer Stern transferred her NPP fellowship from Ames to use the new instrument. With the assistance of Jen Eigenbrode (GCA) they are currently calibrating and testing this complex instrument for research in the coming year.

In this reporting year, Dworkin and Glavin participated in the Stardust Preliminary Examination Team. They discovered cometary amines that are diffused throughout the aerogel (Fig 1).

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Dworkin has collaborated with several laboratories in the analysis of lab simulations of various space environments for amino acids and various other compounds. He has collaborated with Drs. (Elsila) Cook and Bernstein (formerly) of the NASA Ames NAI team in studying the mechanism of amino acid synthesis in 10 K ices, with Hudson and Moore of the GCA in detecting a CI-like suite of amino acids from irradiated acetonitrile ices and and a CM-like suite from irradiated butylamine-containing ices. Dworkin has used his laboratory equipment to characterize the physical properties and reactivity of the silylating agent for the SAM suite on the MSL rover and to study the reactivity of hydrazine thruster plumes with amino acids, alcohols, ketones, and aerogel in association with Mahaffy and Glavin of the GCA. With Matrajt (Univ. Washington), Glavin, and Botta (Univ. Bern, GCA collaborator) he has begun the analysis of Antarctic ice blocks for amino acids and micrometeorites. He continues to develop methods for analyzing single IDP grains and Stardust particles. Research has started on studying parent-body aqueous processing of aromatic compounds with Perry Gerakines (Univ. Alabama), amines in lunar breccias with Richard Walker (Univ. Maryland and GCA), and geochromatography of cyanide polymers with Jim Cleaves (CIW NAI team).

He has also employed Mr. James Doty III, now a Rice University freshman, to study the nucleobase distribution in three meteorites: Murchison, LEW90500, and ALH83100. Doty presented his preliminary results at the 2006 Gordon Research Graduate Student Conference on the Origin of Life. He continued this work at GSFC as a SUIA student (summer 2007), and also assisted in Cleaves’ analysis. Doty also assisted Josh Stern (SUIA) in developing analytical methods for identifying chiral carboxylic acids in meteorites.

Dworkin has also been deeply involved in the preparation of the Phase-A Proposal for the OSIRIS Discovery-12 mission. This carbonaceous asteroid sample return mission addresses three points of the Astrobiology Roadmap

(2) Determine any chemical precursors of life in the solar system.
(3) Characterize the cosmic sources of matter for potentially habitable environments in the solar system.
(6) Understand the principles that will shape the future of life, both on Earth and beyond.