- Jim Lattis: Thank you, I'd
like to introduce tonight's speaker,
we're glad to have Lena Vincent
who is a third year graduate s
tudent
at the Wisconsin Institute for Di
scovery.
And she's a pioneer in a new
field.
She's come to Wisconsin from
California
to lead the University of Wis
consin
into the field of astrobiology
and she's going to explain he
r role in this to us,
but she's part of a program
that's called OoLALA.
One of the best acronyms any
where,
Origins of Life, Artificial
Life and Astrobiology.
So help me welcome Lena here.
[audience applauds]
- Thank you Jim,
so I just want to do a quick mi
c check for recording.
Sounds good, okay great.
Well I'm really happy to be he
re.
So Jim invited me a couple o
f months ago,
actually right after OoLALA c
ame on the map.
So we've been thinking about
creating an official presence
for astrobiology at UW-Madison
for quite some time.
But that didn't really actually
happen until last spring,
with our inaugural research sho
wcase
which I'm going to talk to yo
u about.
But when Jim invited me,
I thought it'd be a really gre
at idea
to walk you through
the establishment of this new
initiative,
the OoLALA initiative.
But to do that I'm going to need
to talk a little bit about wh
at astrobiology is.
You may not know.
And even if you had heard ab
out it,
you may not be familiar with
what the latest
and greatest in astrobiology
is right now.
So that's what I'm gonna start
with today.
I'm actually gonna start with a b
rief introduction
to what astrobiology is as a
discipline.
And then I'm going to transit
ion into
what UW-Madison is doing in t
his context.
So examples of research that a
re being conducted
by scientists and thinkers
at different levels on our c
ampus.
And then from there I hope that
the OoLALA initiative will ki
nd of justify itself
and walk you through what the Oo
LALA initiative is,
what we're doing, and what ou
r hopes for the future are.
So let's start with a series
of questions.
So I think like any science,
like any discipline, astrobio
logy is driven by questions.
But I happen to think that
the questions that underlie a
strobiology
are some of the most exciting
and some of the grandest we can
ask as human beings.
And those include what is life?
What are we?
Why are we different from non
living things?
How did life get started here o
n Earth?
How did that happen?
It's really difficult to con
ceive,
and yet it keeps me up at night
, it still does.
Does life exist on other worlds?
And if so, how can we detect it?
How can we go to Mars to some
of the icy moons
or even beyond some of
the exoplanets we're now discov
ering,
and figure out if life
is there or has been there in
the past.
And then finally what is the fu
ture
for life here on Earth and in s
pace?
So I think that those questions
do a pretty decent job
of summarizing the core of as
trobiology.
But if you like definitions,
here is a popular definition
that is often cited
and is put forth by the NASA
Astrobiology Institute
which is the leader in coord
inating
and funding astrobiology res
earch,
at least here in the U.S.
And it states that "Astrobiology
is the study of the origins,
"evolution, distribution, and
future of life in the universe."
So you can see it's just the li
ttle questions.
So that is astrobiology.
Now as you might imagine,
if you try to think of what
kinds
of expertise you would need
to try to answer those questions.
You probably wouldn't be able
to come up with a single answer.
And that's because astrobiology
is interdisciplinary to a degree
that is rarely seen in science.
So what I mean by interdisciplin
ary
is that it requires a concer
ted effort
from lots of different kinds of
thinkers
who have expertises and back
grounds
in various different fields,
both in the hard sciences and
in the humanities,
to come together and work on so
lving
the mysteries associated with t
he origin of life
and its distribution in the uni
verse.
And I think that's captured
there quite decently
in that little figure I've i
ncluded there,
which just kind of shows all th
e disciplines
that fall under the umbrella o
f astrobiology.
But even that I don't think
captures quite
the extent to which astrobiology
is interdisciplinary.
In some cases, even transdis
ciplinary.
And also I'll note that the h
umanities
are not included in this figure,
and I think that philosophy
is a huge cornerstone of astro
biology as well.
So because I'm going to spend t
he next
10 or 15 minutes or so
going in and deconstructing
that definition a little bit,
and zooming in on some of the
specific research themes
that are currently being tackle
d by astrobiologists,
I want to spend a couple more mi
nutes here
just dwelling on how cool this is
.
Astrobiology has got to be one
of the most exciting fields,
in my opinion,
I'm a little bit biased beca
use I'm an astrobiologist.
But just imagine being able to
convert a natural curiosity,
you've asked these questions
to yourself before,
maybe you still do.
Being able to turn that natur
al curiosity,
this deep existential need t
o understand
where we came from and why we
're here,
into a scientific career
where you get paid by NASA
or another organization to p
ursue this.
Just how cool that is, I can't
even wrap my head around it.
Another reason astrobiology
to me is so exciting,
especially now,
is that the biggest discoveries
in astrobiology are yet to b
e made.
So we don't have a second exam
ple of life yet,
we don't know if life exists o
n another world.
There are a lot of optimistic
people, myself included.
And the other one is the mystery
that is the origin of life on E
arth.
How did life get started on thi
s planet?
We just have no idea.
You might think that that mak
es it kind
of frustrating for astrobiologi
sts, it totally does.
It means that we as scientists
have
an even steeper hill to climb
in the scientific process.
We don't have more than one exa
mple
of the phenomenon we're trying
to observe
to draw conclusions the way
you might in other fields.
And then we also don't have the
luxury
of being able to watch things
unfold in real time.
So unless you know something,
I don't know of a way of rewindin
g Earth's history
and watching life unfold before
our eyes, right?
So that makes it experimentally
very different,
but I also think it makes it s
uper exciting.
It means that we're in this
phase
where we don't know where we
are.
We're at the frontier,
we don't know what lies ahead.
But a lot of people like myself
are very optimistic
that we will make those discover
ies
and that it's just a matter of
time.
And finally, I think also the
fact that you get
to work with all these differen
t kinds
of thinkers with different pers
pectives,
with different backgrounds,
makes it all that more exciting.
So now I'm going to walk you
through some
of those different perspectives
and show you some different re
search
areas within the umbrella of astr
obiology.
And so one, of course, is
when we're trying to figure ou
t where life came from,
how life got started,
whether it exists on other world
s,
we have to understand
how those worlds come to be
in the first place, right?
We need to know how the raw
materials of living systems
at the simplest level,
even at the elemental level,
how those get concentrated on
what we consider to be plane
tary bodies.
So think of the Earth, this
rocky body
that has all this stuff on it,
that somehow, some time in it
s evolution
led to the appearance of life.
So for that, we need to turn
to this area of planetary scie
nce and astronomy
that's dedicated to understanding
how planetary systems form.
So when you have this cloud of
gas and a star forms,
how do these different clumps
of matter accrete around that s
tar to create planets.
And what are the processes that
drive the formation
of these different kinds of pla
nets?
Some of which eventually will
become hospitable to life.
So that's one area of astrobi
ology
is this broad perspective on h
ow planets form.
How the context for the orig
in of life forms.
A little bit more zoomed in th
an that,
so once we understand how plan
etary systems form,
we need to understand how a pa
rticular planet,
in this case Earth formed,
and what its early history was
like
if we hope to understand how ev
entually
it was conducive to the orig
in of life.
And so here what we have is an
artist depiction
of what we think the Earth look
ed like
around the time when life em
erged.
So you may or may not recall
that the Earth is about 4 1/2
billion years old,
we have some arm wavy estima
tes for when the Earth
became cool enough to actual
ly have water on it,
when you actually started to g
et plate tectonics,
which is the process by whic
h you have new material
kind of being extruded from
the center of the Earth
and creating things like landm
asses.
So we have some arm wavy sense
of what that was like,
we really have no specifics be
yond that.
And so a huge part of astrobi
ology
is trying to understand the
early history of the Earth.
Trying to piece it together in
the context of understanding
when some of the major transi
tions that enabled life,
like the appearance of water
or oxygen,
happened on this planet.
So that's one huge area
and you tend to have people
with backgrounds in geology
and planetary science and geop
hysics and physics,
all of that stuff to try to pi
ece
together this long and comple
x history.
So now, we zoom in even furt
her on the Earth,
and we ask, so once you have
this Earth,
once you have water,
once things start to become pl
easant
enough for living systems to e
merge,
how did the stuff that you ne
ed to make life,
how did that start accumulating
on a planet?
So in the picture I just showe
d you,
you didn't see any life there
, right,
so we know for sure there were
no living things.
But what we're starting to re
alize is
that even though there
were no living things present
on Earth
very very early on,
that the stuff you need to m
ake living things
was accumulating very, very easil
y
by probably a number of diffe
rent ways.
So one classic experiment tha
t you may
or may not have heard of in
the past,
maybe even in a biology course,
is the Miller-Urey experiment.
So what it showed is
that you could make life's b
uilding blocks,
so some of the amino acids,
out of simple ingredients like
atmospheric gases
and lightning.
And when you pass this discharge
through this gas mixture,
you can start making life's b
uilding blocks.
And so this was a really semina
l experiment
to show that the building blocks
of life could readily be made
under early Earth conditions
in the complete absence of life.
Now since then, we've found
many other ways by which this
can happen.
So it turns out if you go down
to
the bottom of the ocean at thes
e hydrothermal vent systems,
they're basically just giant f
actories
for these building blocks.
And likewise maybe even more
elegantly,
I find this so exciting,
we're realizing that this stuff
is being flung at us from space
all the time.
So that's a comet right there,
we've had numerous bodies impac
t our planet.
And we go and analyze them
we find so many of life's bui
lding blocks.
Amino acids, some fatty acids
that could form membranes,
some nuclei bases, some prec
ursors to some of
the nucleic acids that we have i
n our cells today.
So not only are there paths
by which you make
the stuff on a young planet
in the absence of life,
space is also just loaded wit
h it.
So that is really exciting,
I think it inspired a generati
on of scientists
to really look into this ques
tion
of how you now take these thi
ngs,
these Legos if you will, and st
art assembling
them into living systems.
Now what I just showed you wa
s a bottom-up perspective.
So how do you go from the raw
materials of the Earth
that are not alive and you start
incrementally approaching the
complexity of life?
There's another approach which
is more deeply seated
in the biological sciences,
which looks backwards in time.
So it starts with a life that
we know
and see and understand today,
and works backwards to look at
life in deep time
as it may have looked like in
the early history of life.
And so some of the approaches
that we use as astrobiologists
are based on the evolutionary r
elationships
between organisms that we see
today.
And that allows us to go back
further and further in time
and look at common ancestry.
And based on some of the attribu
tes
of those common ancestors,
we can actually draw conclusion
s about
what environments might have
been present on the early Earth
and how they might have been
making a living
in that early Earth context.
Then we can also look at analogs
for early environments on the
early Earth.
Many of which were probably m
uch more extreme
than we'd be comfortable existi
ng in.
So here's a picture of a hot s
pring.
So there are many astrobiologist
s who do fieldwork
who go out in these extreme
environments
and look at the diversity of
living systems that live there
and figure out how they make
a living
to try to infer backwards
what the earliest ancestors
of life might have been doing
as well.
And then another approach for
looking at life in deep time
is actually looking at the r
ock record
and looking for physical eviden
ce that life left behind
throughout its history.
And so what you have on the ri
ght hand side there
is actually a very famous mic
rofossil,
some UW-Madison researchers
actually helped
in elucidating around what time,
when this organism might have
been alive.
It turns out it's about 3 1/2
billion years ago,
which is a very long time.
But you can see that that's
still fairly complex,
it looks like a string of cells,
almost looks like a worm.
That's a pretty complex life r
ight there
and if that was already present
3 1/2 billion years ago,
we have to imagine, when was
the actual origin of life?
It might be anywhere between
4.2 to 3 1/2 billion years ago.
So very, very far back.
And so that's an example
of physical evidence that we ca
n look back on.
Now there is one limitation wit
h this.
It turns out our rock record
is limited,
so I mentioned plate tectonics
and the fact that it kind of r
ecycles
and creates new crust
by extruding material from t
he interior.
It turns out that that's a giant
recycling system,
it basically draws down all
the stuff that was at the sur
face
and buries it.
So our rock record only extends
back
to about 3.8 billion years ago.
So that means that between 4
1/2 and 3.8 billion years ago,
we have no idea, we have no rec
ord,
it's basically a blind spot i
n our record.
So those are the life in deep
time approaches,
but as I just mentioned they
have their limitations.
So then there's a complementar
y approach,
and I'm partial to this one be
cause this is the area I'm in.
And this is to again work from
the bottom up.
So as I mentioned, we don't have
a second example of life yet.
And if I had to summarize arti
ficial life in one sentence,
it would be that it's trying to
make
those second examples of lif
e here on Earth.
Why would we want to make second
examples of life?
It's kind of a fringy area.
You might associate it with w
eird experiments
and I'm sure there are a bunch
of sci-fi plots based on sim
ilar approaches.
But our rationale is that by mak
ing
second examples of life,
we can, along with the example
of life as we know it,
we can come to some generalities
about what makes living syst
ems the way that they are.
And it allows us to see how ex
otic life can get,
what, are there different ways
of being alive?
And if so, what characterize
s them,
what do they have in common?
So when we go to look for life
on other worlds,
we're not just constrained
to our perception of life as w
e know it, right.
We might catch forms of life
that seem very exotic to us
because they are very dissimilar
from life as we know it,
and yet are alive by our defin
itions.
So that's the rationale behi
nd artificial life,
and there are lots of different
ways
of doing artificial life.
So you may have heard it ass
ociated
with artificial intelligence.
So a lot of artificial life i
s in silico,
so it's based on computer models
and computer simulations.
So what you have on the far
right side there
is an example of a cellular a
utomata,
so it's actually a computer a
lgorithm
that creates these little cell
s that obey simple rules.
And you can get really comple
x behaviors out
of them like evolution.
So in some ways they can imitate
aspects of life,
and yet be in this gray area
between alive and not alive.
And then you have the wet A-life
or the experimental A-life,
which is literally trying to go
into
a lab and make second examples
of life.
So that's the artificial life per
spective.
Now I just mentioned that we
really need
to understand life as a gene
ral phenomenon
to really be able to hope to
detect it on other worlds.
Because there is a chance
that if we did find life on
another world
it would be very similar to lif
e as we know it.
There is also an equally strong
probability
that it would look completely
dissimilar
to life as we know it.
And if we went to say Mars or
Titan,
or on an exoplanet when we have
the capacity to do so in the fu
ture,
if we went with our measures
only calibrated to life as we
know it,
we might miss these very more e
xotic forms of life.
So this is all part
of this discussion around bio
signatures.
So biosignatures refers to arti
facts
or phenomena or objects that
are smoking guns for life.
And that involves sampling mater
ial
from a planet for example,
and deploying these measures
and these observables
and coming to some conclusion a
bout whether
those observables were the pr
oduct of life or not.
So biosignatures is very tricky,
because it turns out, a lot
of the biosignatures we have
can be confounded by nonlivin
g processes.
And so that's what a lot of biosi
gnatures research
is really trying to tackle,
is finding smoking guns for life
where we have almost 100% cer
tainty
that they must've been produce
d by life.
It turns out that's very hard
to do,
to my knowledge we don't really
have one of those yet.
And then if you add the laye
r on top of that,
which is that life might exist
in very exotic ways,
then what do biosignatures me
an in that context?
So there's a big push in ast
robiology now
for what are called agnostic
biosignatures
where you try to detect life base
d
on some fundamental processes
that life does
without focusing on the specifics
of what that life looks like,
and that's very hard to do as
you might imagine.
So that's the biosignatures
aspect.
And now we look outwards again,
now that we have the problem of
biosignatures in mind.
What do we do with it?
So as you may or may not be aware
,
we are not alone by any means,
and that may be true in term
s of the life question,
but we know for sure that we
are not
the only planetary system.
And so this is a map,
and I'm actually not sure how c
urrent this is,
so we have a new exoplanet sate
llite
that's currently collecting dat
a, TESS,
and I don't think that that data
is reflected here in this map.
But this right here shows 4,00
0 planetary systems
that have been found in our
surveys of the sky so far.
And multiply that by the number
of planets in all those plan
etary systems.
So we have a lot of potential
planets to play with here.
And one of the ones that you
may have heard
of in the news was this Trapp
ist system,
and it kind of made headlines
because it was found
that some of these planets mi
ght actually be very similar
to Earth in terms of their si
ze and distance
of the star that they orbit.
So that's really cool and that
's really exciting,
and I think it motivates a lot
of people to do astrobiology,
just because when you look at
this map,
it's hard to not be optimistic
about the likelihood
of life being somewhere else
beyond Earth.
But there's still so much we d
on't understand, right?
So I put the Trappist I syst
em there
not just to show you the systems
that show a lot of promise,
but also to caution you,
because there's a lot of hype
about this habitable zone discu
ssion,
and I just want to say right now
that there's still so much we
don't understand
about what makes anything habit
able.
And these systems look very di
fferent
from the solar system we unders
tand relatively well.
And so there's still so much w
e don't understand.
And we're also limited by the
fact
that we can't actually go to
these places yet,
so these are all observations
that we have to make from ver
y far away.
And so that you can imagine that
the biosignatures problem
becomes even harder at that
stage.
So anyway, maybe I've dissua
ded you a little bit
about what can be done in astr
obiology,
because we're faced with all t
hese problems,
but I think it's really exciting.
I just think it shows that
we still have a lot of work
to do.
Like I said, it's really hard to
look at this map
and not be optimistic about
the chance of finding life.
We just have to be smart abo
ut it.
So with this in mind,
I'm now going to transition ov
er to what researchers
at UW-Madison are doing to ta
ckle some of these questions.
And with their permission, I
gathered some information
about what they were doing, a
nd I tried
to pick a selection of resea
rchers
that really represent the breadt
h of astrobiology.
So I'm going to highlight five
research groups
and before I do that, I just
want to pause and just mention
that for a long time here at
UW-Madison, until recently,
we had the Wisconsin Astrobio
logy Research Consortium,
which was a decade-long rese
arch consortium
funded by the NASA Astrobiolo
gy Institute.
And it was a team of 14 invest
igators,
many of which were here at UW
Madison,
mostly in the Geological Scienc
es Department.
And their main objective was
to study methods for life detec
tion.
So not just look at the hist
ory of the Earth
and how life influenced diff
erent Earth processes,
but then how those can be used
to design life detection meth
ods.
So I've summarized here their g
oals,
and if you want more informat
ion about this,
you want to see a collection o
f papers
and the findings that came out
of this decade-long initiative,
I've put a link to the website
there
and I can definitely share that
with anyone who's interested i
n learning more.
So this is no longer ongoing,
so the funding for this expired
about a year and a half ago.
However, I think it created a
strong legacy at UW-Madison,
especially in the geosciences
department,
to continue in this line of re
search.
And that brings me to Dr. Ann
ie Bauer,
who is an assistant professor
in the department of geoscience,
and what she's interested in
is reconstructing key transi
tions in Earth's history.
So if you recall, I showed you
that picture of the early Earth,
and her question is really h
ow did we go
from this really hot, inhosp
itable planet
to this really pretty blue mar
ble we call home?
And the particular transitions
she's interested in
are the appearance and the ev
olution of crust,
so landmasses.
The oxygenation of the Earth
and plate tectonics.
So how did those happen, when d
id they happen.
And the key message she uses
is geochronology.
So she basically dates rocks.
And she does that by looking at
these zircons.
So zircons, you may be familiar,
they're this very beautiful ge
mstone.
But in their raw form, they
are a really cool mineral,
because it's one of the hard
iest minerals you can find.
So that means that when thes
e zircons formed,
even 4 1/2 billion years ago,
they're going to stick around.
The cool thing about zircons
is that the way that they grow
tends to trap material inside
the crystal.
And they therefore lock in a
bunch
of really interesting geochemi
cal information.
So what she does she actually
looks at these zircons,
she collects them from differ
ent localities,
so she was kind enough to share
pictures
of her working in the field.
So this is a gneiss complex,
so gneiss is a kind of rock.
And she extracts zircons from t
hose,
and that formation is actually
3.9 billion years old.
So she collects these zircons,
and then she uses a method ca
lled laser ablation
to kind of peel back the layers
of the zircon,
and then uses isotopic methods
to actually date those layers.
So if you're not familiar with
isotopes,
you basically look, in a very
general sense,
just look at the distribution
of those isotopes
and based on the ratios, you ca
n tell
when and how particular proces
ses
might have been happening.
So that's what she's doing,
so she is using these zircons
and these analytical means
to study these transitions
and reconstruct them based on
her data.
So then to shift gears a little
bit,
we also have this question of
life in the clouds of Venus.
Now, this is an area that is be
ing spearheaded
by Sanjay Limaye, who's a re
search scientist
at the Space Science and Engi
neering Center at UW-Madison.
So Sanjay has been working on V
enus for a long time,
and he has this really cool
hypothesis
that the clouds of Venus might
be hospitable to microbial life.
So this is actually not a ne
w idea,
it's been around for a long
time, dating to the late 60s.
But there's these mysterious d
ark clouds,
you can see them there on that
image,
and they're very mysterious,
they think that they're mostly
made of sulfuric material,
but the height at which they
are in the atmosphere
and the temperature that cha
racterizes them
and the kinds of materials yo
u find aerosolized
in that layer,
make it kind of hospitable to
microbial life.
And so Sanjay released a paper
last year
where he compared some of the
light absorbing properties
of different microbial proteins
and the light absorbing prop
erties of these clouds
and they're oddly similar.
So he has this cool hypothesis
about life being possible in t
he clouds of Venus.
And this is a concept here f
or a platform,
a maneuverable platform that
would go to Venus
and actually sample these cl
oud layers
and see if there's life there.
So this is called the VAMP.
And so I just thought I would
note that a graduate student
who is actually involved in OoLAL
A, Jaime Cordova,
will be going to Moscow later t
his year
to try to pitch this VAMP co
ncept to
the Venera-D mission to Venus.
So that would be really cool.
Okay, so then we're going to
switch gears a little bit more
and now talk about the origins
of biochemistry of life as we
know it.
So John Yin's group over at the
Wisconsin Institute
for Discovery has been doing
work on this,
and here I'm highlighting Hayl
ey's work,
who is a graduate student
in the chemical engineering
department.
And what she's interested in i
s figuring out
how the complex processes of l
ife got started.
So we know that cellular life
today is a very complex thing.
It requires this orchestration
of really complex processes.
And the one she's particularly
interested in
is the information processing
and the energy processing featur
es of life.
And she is particularly inte
rested in those
because it's this chicken and eg
g problem.
So you need energy processing
to transfer information,
but you also need that informat
ion to feed back
and influence those energy ha
rvesting processes.
So she's interested in how th
at got started.
How could you get one or the oth
er,
was that a sequential thing,
did they have to emerge simulta
neously?
So what she's doing is she's l
ooking
at a particular process in cel
ls,
which is peptide formation,
so proteins are kind of a corn
erstone of biology.
They do everything in the cell,
and the way that they form is
by stringing together these
amino acids,
these beads if you will.
In cellular life today, that
's carried out by very
very complex processes, things
like the ribosome.
But she's interested in how
this process might
have gotten started on the e
arly Earth.
So what their group is doing is
they're looking
at a process that happens in n
atural environments
as a driving force for the cr
eation of these peptides
in the absence of complex mach
inery like the ribosome.
So what they found is that w
et-drying cycle,
so that repeating dehydration
and re hydration that you get
in something like a hydrotherm
al pool,
might actually drive the format
ion of these proteins
in the absence of complex life.
And so I won't go into this in
detail
because it's a little bit beyo
nd even my comprehension,
but being able to show that
using this wet-drying process
and by adding different cond
itions
and different energy sources,
that you can create these chains
and that you can actually enco
de information in them.
So you actually get biases in
the kinds of proteins you get
depending on the environment
that they're formed in.
That's really cool work.
And then again switching gears,
so Simon Gilroy actually came
to give a talk here a while ago,
but I thought I would highli
ght his research again.
So Simon is a professor of b
otany,
and what he's interested in is
basically
this question of surviving in s
pace, right?
So we have the ISS right now,
but we also have all these plans
to maybe go and colonize Mars
and set up long-term colonies
on the moon,
and then eventually go farther
and farther out in the solar sy
stem.
But there's this big question
of how will we survive,
how will we sustain ourselves?
And wouldn't it be cool if we c
ould
actually grow crop-producing pl
ants in space?
And so he's been studying how
space conditions
actually affect crop- produc
ing plant growth.
So he was kind enough to s
hare the slide
about some of the upcoming mi
ssions that they have
on the ISS that are due to l
aunch I think
and he said about nine months
from now.
And so y'know they have all t
hese tests
where they're actually going to
analyze
how cotton grows in orbit.
Develop new kinds of chambers
and instrumentation to enabl
e this.
So I think that's a really c
ool sampler
of the different ways in which
UW-Madison researchers
are contributing to astrobiology.
And of course because I'm here
and I have the opportunity
to plug my own research,
I'm just going to talk about
our group a little bit.
So I've shown here our PI,
principal investigator David
Baum,
who's also a professor in the b
otany department.
And then our team of really
talented undergraduate students.
And I've chosen to highlight
here our collective expertise.
So you can see the extent to
which we are interdisciplinary
even within our own research
group.
And the question we're trying t
o ask by the way
is a pretty-- is not a trivial
one,
we're interested in the orig
ins of evolution.
How did evolution start?
So we have a model that we've b
uilt
where we think that evolutio
n starts very early,
it's probably one of the earl
iest processes
to have arisen at the origin o
f life.
And so we're conducting labo
ratory experiments
that, summarized very briefly,
are akin
to just creating mini early
Earth conditions.
And then looking for evidence
that evolution is occurring.
And so we have some sense of
what that should look like.
And I'm not going to spend too
much time here,
but if you have questions ab
out that
please feel free to ask me
because I'd love to talk mor
e about it.
But all I want to say is
that we're finding really, re
ally cool results.
So we mix minerals and prebio
tic soups,
and we look for evidence of
these cool processes happening.
And we have some really exci
ting tantalizing results.
So anyway, now with that,
I hope that you get a really
good sampler
of different kinds of astrob
iology research
that are currently being done,
and that is a small subset b
y the way.
I only had time to go over five.
We currently have 22 self-ide
ntified groups
that are doing astrobiology re
levant research
at UW-Madison, and the list k
eeps growing.
So with that now I want to talk
about the OoLALA initiative.
So what is a OoLALA?
So you know it stands for or
igin of life,
artificial life, and astrobiology
.
So I cannot take credit for th
at acronym,
that was actually my PI David
Baum's idea,
which is a superb acronym.
And so you OoLALA is an init
iative that's centered
at the Wisconsin Institute for Di
scovery,
which is a public research ins
titute.
And our goals are to organize
and support this community
of astrobiologists here on ca
mpus.
And we are doing that by cre
ating programming
and resources to help coordinate
and highlight research on campus
and to draw awareness to ast
robiology
and the fact that there are
so many people at UW-Madison
doing astrobiology research.
And we're also trying to provid
e resources and support
for students who are coming i
nto science
and who are seeking out UW-M
adison
because of their interest in thes
e fields.
Which is kind of a new thing.
Most astrobiologists that are
in business today
either made careers doing so
mething else,
and this was an interest that t
hey developed later on.
Or they're like me,
and they're joining astrobio
logy relatively early
in their careers but started
out doing something fundamenta
lly different,
in my case I was a stem cell
biologist before I did this.
But we now have undergraduat
e students
and young students who are co
ming into science
because of their interest in thes
e areas.
And we find that not just on
this campus,
but in general, there are a lot
of resources lacking to support
them.
So those really were the thre
e missions
that we were trying to accom
plish
with the establishment of OoL
ALA.
So the first concrete way th
at we decided
to do this is by launching a we
bsite.
So this is our website, astr
obio.wisc.edu.
It's hosted by the Wisconsin
Institute for Discovery
and it's still under construc
tion,
so we're still trying to fin
d different kinds
of content to put on there,
so if you have any suggestions
that you feel would be helpful,
I'd be very open to hearing those
.
So this is our website here.
And our goal, very generally,
was to consolidate
all of this amazing research
that's being done
related to OoLALA under one ro
of.
So when I was a graduate stude
nt,
when I knew I wanted to pursu
e grad school,
I knew I wanted to do astrobiol
ogy.
But there are very few places,
there are very few institutions
where there are dedicated astrob
iology departments.
In fact, I don't know of any.
So that makes it very hard
to find out who is doing astrob
iology research.
And so what we thought would
be really useful
is to create one place
where you could go and find t
hat information,
even if there was no formal de
partment
to which it was associated.
So that was a main motivation.
And so one of the things that w
e decided to do
was create an about page.
So you can't read anything here
but I encourage you to go ch
eck it out.
It just has a summary of what
astrobiology is,
what astrobiology at UW-Madiso
n means,
and how to get involved.
So giving some pointers to you
ng students
who are maybe interested in
pursuing astrobiology research,
but aren't sure how to do that.
This would be a place to start.
And then of course we have o
ur research page.
So we have compiled a list of
research profiles
of UW-Madison faculty and re
search groups
that are doing astrobiology
relevant research.
And we have organized them b
ased on
the kind of discipline that t
hey belong to.
As I said, we currently have 2
2 listed on there,
but the list keeps growing.
And so this is a really grea
t place for someone
who has a particular area that
they're interested in,
say atmospheric science.
Who wants to find what research
ers at UW-Madison
are doing atmospheric science
with an interest
in astrobiology relevant que
stions.
And so then one of the other
concrete ways
in which we are trying to ac
complish
the goals of you OoLALA is t
hrough programming.
So this is a research showcase
that took place last spring.
It was funded by the Women
in Science and Engineering Le
adership Institute,
and the Wisconsin Institute for
Discovery.
And our goal was to highligh
t advances
in astrobiology research
through the lens of these fo
ur researchers
who came from off-campus,
and who gave hour-long public
lectures
at the Wisconsin Institute for
Discovery
and who stayed here two to thr
ee days to interact
with members of the UW-Madis
on community.
And so that was extremely su
ccessful,
again we try to have speakers c
ome in
who represented the diversity
of different fields and pers
pectives in astrobiology.
So we had Dr. Sarah Walker f
rom ASU come
and give a really awesome talk
on the physics of life
and trying to elucidate the
general physical rules
that underlie life and its em
ergence.
Then we had Dr. Amanda Garcia
who is a postdoc at the Univ
ersity of Arizona,
who uses reconstruction meth
ods to study ancient genes
in bacteria and microorganisms
to study the co-evolution of lif
e on Earth,
particularly in the early stages
of life's history.
Then we had Dr. Kate Adamala
come,
who does really exciting work
on building basically fake c
ells,
synthetic cells for a number
of different applications,
including studying what
the first cells might have loo
ked like.
So trying to make artificial lif
e.
And then finally we had Dr.
Sarah Horst come,
from Johns Hopkins University,
who gave a fantastic talk on
her research
on Titan's atmosphere and so
me of
the really cool prebiotic chemis
try that happens on Titan.
And as a special bonus, Sarah
is actually a co-investigator
on the recently selected NASA D
ragonfly mission,
and so she talked about that e
ven
before it was selected by NASA,
it was actually a few months
before that.
So that was really exciting,
I'll get back to that in a second
.
So this is just to show tha
t the showcase
was really successful in ter
ms of its reach,
so we actually got a lot of a
ttention
including from the NASA Astr
obiology Institute,
who took great interest in t
his series.
And overall, we thought it was
a really successful and usef
ul way
to connect these pioneers in thei
r fields,
interact, and make contact wi
th the UW-Madison community.
And hopefully inspire some y
oung students
to consider pursuing careers
in this area.
So then again I just want to
boast this,
because we had the privilege
of having Sarah Horst
come talk about the Dragonfly
mission
before it was even selected.
So the fact that it was sele
cted is even more exciting.
So this is basically this qua
dcopter
that they're going to send to T
itan,
and it's going to travel to
a dozen different locations
and sample different areas
for pre-biotically relevant c
ompounds.
So this is truly an astrobio
logy mission
and it's due to launch in 202
6 I believe,
and we'll be getting hopefully
the first stuff back in 2034.
So more than a decade away,
but still really exciting to thin
k
that we're going back to Titan
and so very high hopes for that.
And here's just a closer look
at what that quadcopter is g
oing to look like.
So it's basically going to fly
around,
so it's going to take advant
age of the fact
that Titan's atmosphere is m
uch much thicker,
it's basically just going to
glide around and move about
and find all these really inter
esting sites
and then sample them.
And then I also want to mention
that if you want to learn more
about Dragonfly
and more about all the talks
that happened as part of the sh
owcase,
you can go to our website and
all
of the recordings are posted the
re.
So even if you couldn't make it,
or if you know of someone who mi
ght be interested,
please feel free to navigate th
ere.
All the talks are for a gene
ral audience
and they were all really cool,
and I think they did a really g
ood job
just representing just how br
oad astrobiology is.
So that's actually all I have.
But I just want to plug again
our website,
and I just wanted to put our emai
l addresses here.
So that's me, and that's Jaime
Cordova,
so that's his email there.
So he's our social media dire
ctor,
we have a Twitter account,
and he is also a great resource.
He is also a JPL Solar System
Ambassador,
so he knows a lot about upcomi
ng space missions,
so if you're interested in th
at, he's a great contact.
And yeah, so I'm happy to tak
e questions now.
[audience applauds]