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Mini-Review: Probing the limits of extremophilic life in extraterrestrial environment-simulated experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2012

Claudia A.S. Lage ,
Gabriel Z.L. Dalmaso ,
Lia C.R.S. Teixeira ,
Amanda G. Bendia ,
Ivan G. Paulino-Lima ,
Douglas Galante ,
Eduardo Janot-Pacheco ,
Ximena C. Abrevaya ,
Armando Azúa-Bustos  and
Vivian H. Pelizzari
...Show all authors
Claudia A.S. Lage*
Affiliation:
Laboratório de Radiações em Biologia, Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Gabriel Z.L. Dalmaso
Affiliation:
Laboratório de Radiações em Biologia, Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Lia C.R.S. Teixeira
Affiliation:
Laboratório de Radiações em Biologia, Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Amanda G. Bendia
Affiliation:
Laboratório de Radiações em Biologia, Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Ivan G. Paulino-Lima
Affiliation:
NASA-Ames Research Center, USA
Douglas Galante
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Eduardo Janot-Pacheco
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Ximena C. Abrevaya
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio, Universidad de Buenos Aires – CONICET, Argentina
Armando Azúa-Bustos
Affiliation:
Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile
Vivian H. Pelizzari
Affiliation:
Instituto Oceanográfico, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Alexandre S. Rosado
Affiliation:
Instituto de Microbiologia Prof Paulo Góes, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
*
e-mail: lage@biof.ufrj.br
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Abstract

Astrobiology is a relatively recent scientific field that seeks to understand the origin and dynamics of life in the Universe. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain life in the cosmic context throughout human history, but only now, technology has allowed many of them to be tested. Laboratory experiments have been able to show how chemical elements essential to life, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen combine in biologically important compounds. Interestingly, these compounds are ubiquitous. How these compounds were combined to the point of originating cells and complex organisms is still to be unveiled by science. However, our 4.5 billion years old Solar system appeared in a 10 billion years old Universe. Thus, simple cells such as micro-organisms may have had time to form in planets older than ours or in other suitable places in the Universe. One hypothesis related to the appearance of life on Earth is called panspermia, which predicts that microbial life could have been formed in the Universe billions of years ago, travelling between planets, and inseminating units of life that could have become more complex in habitable planets such as Earth. A project designed to test the viability of extremophile micro-organisms exposed to simulated extraterrestrial environments is in progress at the Carlos Chagas Filho Institute of Biophysics (UFRJ, Brazil) to test whether microbial life could withstand inhospitable environments. Radiation-resistant (known or novel ones) micro-organisms collected from extreme terrestrial environments have been exposed (at synchrotron accelerators) to intense radiation sources simulating Solar radiation, capable of emitting radiation in a few hours equivalent to many years of accumulated doses. The results obtained in these experiments reveal an interesting possibility of the existence of microbial life beyond Earth.

Keywords

astrobiologycosmic dustextremophilespanspermiaultraviolet
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 11 , Issue 4: SPECIAL ISSUE: THE SAO PAULO ADVANCED SCHOOL OF ASTROBIOLOGY – SPASA 2011 , October 2012 , pp. 251 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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