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It's Life… Isn't

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It's Life… Isn't It’s life… isn’t it? Scientists find it hard enough to pin down evidence of early life on our own planet. How on Earth do we plan to determine whether life exists elsewhere? John Whitfield finds out. e can, it’s fair to say, be confident their research agendas towards looking for As a control,the landers did the same tests on that there’s life on Earth — but life,says chemist Richard Mathies of the Uni- a heat-sterilized sample of martian soil. ASA/SPL Wproving it is a different matter. In versity of California,Berkeley.“Exobiology is Remarkably, every test gave a positive N December 1990, the Galileo spacecraft becoming more prominent,” he says. NASA result. The soil samples released oxygen and pointed its sensors back at Earth before and the European Space Agency (ESA) are compounds made from ingredients in the setting off for Jupiter. The probe reported moving from rock and mineral experiments nutrient solution, and carbon in the experi- an atmosphere abundant in oxygen and to biological ones, he explains. In 2009, both ment seemed to be incorporated into unusually rich in methane. It also detected a agencies will send landers to Mars that, organic molecules. Unfortunately, most of mysterious pigment that was unlikely to be unlike the Spirit and Opportunity rovers the controls — except the experiments of mineral origin: something earthlings call now on the planet, will be designed to look designed to detect nutrient uptake — also chlorophyll. Yet the astrophysicist Carl for the chemistry of life. gave positive results. At the same time, two Sagan and his colleagues were still cautious Astrobiologists are currently working out instruments designed to analyse the planet’s in their conclusions based on these results. what to look for, designing the instruments chemistry, a gas chromatograph and a mass “Together, these are strongly suggestive of that could detect it, and using the most spectrometer, failed to detect any organic life on Earth,”they wrote1. inhospitable, Mars-like environments on compounds on the surface of Mars2. Galileo, admittedly, was not designed to Earth as training grounds. Even so, these detect life. And it did have a rather distant missions are highly unlikely to give a defini- Hit and miss view of our planet, with only hints from the tive answer. For that, we will have to wait at In sum, these experiments gave us some atmosphere to work out what was going on at least another decade, when planned mis- clues about the chemical environment on the surface. But some dedicated, close-up sions will bring back martian rocks for study Mars, but failed to confirm or refute the examinations have proven no more conclu- in terrestrial laboratories. existence of life. “The experiments all sive. Efforts to detect faint traces of life in The first experiments to look for life on turned out to have some element of ambi- Earth’s oldest rocks, some 4 billion years old, Mars were the two Viking landers of 1976. guity, but that’s utterly understandable,” and in martian rocks that have fallen to Each lander scooped up a spoonful of soil says chemist John Kerridge of the Univer- Earth,have likewise produced results that are from the planet’s surface, moistened it with sity of California, San Diego. Most both ambiguous and disputed; claims of pure, sterile water, incubated it, and watched researchers conclude that inorganic chemi- errors in procedure and interpretation fly for evidence of chemical processes similar to cal reactions, perhaps powered by ultravio- back and forth with regularity. those found in terrestrial microbes — such as let light, must have produced the chemicals Nevertheless, space agencies are shifting the uptake of nutrients or exchange of gases. detected3.A few still argue that the positive 288 NATURE | VOL 430 | 15 JULY 2004 | www.nature.com/nature © 2004 Nature Publishing Group news feature 3.5-billion-year-old rocks in Australia are fossilized bacteria or artefacts produced in hot springs has been controversial for several years9,10.Those astrobiologists not actively involved in early-Earth research keep an eye on its developments, hoping that it can pro- vide a blueprint for their field. “The issue of CHMANN/MAGNUM PHOTOS CHMANN/MAGNUM whether these microfossils have a biological ZA origin or not is so contentious; it really shows P. the need to attack the problem from as many angles as possible,” says Jorge Vago, study scientist on ESA’s 2009 ExoMars project. Both morphological and chemical signals are needed to confirm a claim. But both have their problems. “We’ve not yet identified a smoking gun for life,” says geologist Jack Farmer of Arizona State University,Tempe. Spot the difference: the Atacama Desert (above) is very similar to the martian landscape (left), A rocky road which makes it an ideal place to test equipment The most recent attempt to look for evidence for probing Mars for signs of life. of life on Mars, the ill-fated Beagle 2 lander that presumably crashed on the planet last moon Europa,or Saturn’s moon Titan. Christmas, was equipped to dig into the ASA/R. RESSMEYER/CORBIS Astrobiologists still face the problem high- martian soil, to escape the surface environ- N lighted by Viking: how do you ensure that ment that destroys organic compounds, and ‘evidence’ of life isn’t something produced by study the isotopic ratio of different elements. non-living processes? Such concerns have On Earth, living things preferentially incor- been at the heart of the debate on ALH84001,a porate the lighter form of carbon. The ratios 4.5-billion-year-old martian meteorite found of different isotopes of sulphur, iron, nickel in Antarctica in 1984. A team led by David and chromium have also been proposed as McKay of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in signs of biological activity. Houston, Texas, argued in 1996 that several But, again, it is not clear how geology and features of the rock might have been produced chemistry influence isotope ratios, particu- by living organisms4.These were organic larly in rocks that may be billions of years old. compounds, minerals similar to those pro- Some believe that the carbon in Greenland’s duced by Earth bacteria, and structures ancient rocks has a volcanic, rather than a resembling fossil bacteria. biological origin11,12.Geological processes But in the years following the publica- that transform carbonate minerals into results should be taken as evidence for liv- tion,these claims came under sustained crit- organic matter seem to produce compounds ing microbes. icism. Some features, such as the proposed that, like biological remains, are enriched Ambiguity wasn’t the study’s only prob- microfossils and mineral structures, could with the lighter form of carbon, says geo- lem. Even if Viking had delivered a definite have been produced by non- chemist Mark van Zuilen of ‘no’ to life, this could simply have been living chemistry5,6.Others, such “We’ve not yet the Petrographic and Geochemi- because its instruments were too crude. as the organic chemicals present identified a smoking cal Research Centre in Nancy, “There could have been 10 million bacteria in the rock,may have been added gun for life.” France.“I don’t think that carbon per gram of martian soil,and Viking wouldn’t to it after it arrived on Earth7. — Jack Farmer isotope ratios are that definitive have seen them,” says Andrew Steele of the Few researchers now believe that an indicator of life,”he says. NASA Astrobiology Institute at the Carnegie ALH84001 is good evidence for the presence “We probably don’t know all the ways in Institution of Washington. of past life on Mars. which isotope fractions can come about,” Facing such problems, interest in looking Yet even those who disagree with the ini- adds geologist John Parnell of the University for life on Mars waned after Viking, says tial claims made for ALH84001 are glad of the of Aberdeen, UK.“There may be things going astrobiologist Christopher McKay of the effect the study had on the field.“Exobiology on that we haven’t thought of yet.” Parnell is NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett came out of the closet with that paper,” says leading a UK project to identify biological Field,California.“The experiments were very Mathies.“Suddenly it was OK to be working molecules on the early Earth and Mars. His hard to follow up on,” he says. But there has on this stuff.”Christopher McKay and his col- favoured biomarker is a class of organic mol- been a boom in instrumentation since then leagues also helped to define the categories of ecules called hopanes, which are produced — today’s detectors can spot a single cell, or evidence — organic chemicals, minerals and from the breakdown of simple cell walls.They molecules at concentrations of parts per tril- fossils — necessary to build a convincing case are very long-lived — on Earth they persist lion. And our understanding of the tenacity for martian life, says Steele. “Even if the for billions of years — and we know of no of life in extreme environments has grown. answers were wrong, the approach was good inorganic process that can produce them. On Earth, evidence for bacterial life has been — they raised the bar by several metres.” Mathies and his colleagues, on the other found everywhere from deep oceans devoid Similar, and sometimes acrimonious, hand, believe that a good starting point is of light, to hot springs at temperatures above debates swirl around the evidence for the old- to look for amino acids.“If you look at life on boiling point. By the mid-1990s, biologists est life on Earth.
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