GENETICS & ASTROBIOLOGY
Life: How to Make a Cosmic Omelet

Program Summary

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Producer: Daniel Grossman
Devon Island Feature Producer: Robin White
Life in Hell Feature Producer: Joe Jordan
On the Air Beginning: November 2001

Over the past two years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has launched a major initiative aimed at unraveling some really big questions:

• Where and how did life begin on Earth?
• Where else might life be found in the universe?

Dubbing their new field, "astrobiology," scientists from the disciplines of biology, geology, and chemistry are collaborating on projects they hope will yield answers. Genetic science is one of the main tools they are using.

In this program, John Hockenberry explores scientific research on the origins of life and where else in the universe life is found.

So how do scientists think life began on Earth?

One thing most agree on: at life's beginning, there had to be a cycle that involved some sort of molecules - probably DNA or RNA - that had the capability to encode information, a quality which would make replication possible. There also had to be proteins, some sort of energy source, some sort of container, and some form of metabolism.

That's where the agreement ends. The point of contention: which of these features came first?

To investigate this question, scientists are studying life forms in environments they suppose are not unlike that of Earth before life existed at all. Much of the work to discover life elsewhere in the universe takes place in Earth's most extreme environments - the boiling hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, Devon Island and the deep caves around the world.

In these places, where scientists thought life was impossible, they have found creatures that can endure temperatures above boiling and below freezing. Their discoveries of these "extremophiles" offer hope that explorers may find not little green men, but microbes on other planets such as Mars and on Jupiter's moon, Europa.

To help us learn about life in other parts of the universe, producer Robin White takes us to observe an international expedition to Devon Island in the frozen North Pole. Scientists there are studying microbes around a large impact crater and inside the rocky terrain, in hopes that what they learn here may help them know where to look for life on Mars.

Producer Dan Grossman goes searching for life below the surface of our planet with renowned biologist Penelope Boston. She's famous for finding life forms in the most hostile underground environments like of such as sulphuric and hydrochloric acid. She takes us on a trek through New Mexico's Spider Cave, where she is studying extremophiles that appear to be eating minerals from the cave walls.

But what would it mean if we found microbes on other planets?

We might learn that DNA is a universal code for all life. Or, that some forms of life on Earth came from Mars. Even more intriguing, we might learn there are other systems upon which life is based.

Maybe this type of conclusion wouldn't sink in right away, but it might, eventually, says physicist Paul Davies. Finding out we're not alone could change how we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos as fundamentally as Copernicus did when he recast the sun, not the Earth, as the center of our solar system, he says.

Special Feature: Life in Hell

Yellowstone is (literally) one of the hottest venues for studying the world's hardiest organism, Archea, which can withstand temperatures above water's boiling point. How does Archea's DNA code for proteins that can withstand such heat? And does this tell us something about how early life on earth survived and evolved?

Topic In-Depth: Evolution in a test tube

Last Updated: July 2004