{"id":1956,"date":"2021-07-12T23:55:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-12T23:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biota.org\/?page_id=1956"},"modified":"2023-05-18T21:05:29","modified_gmt":"2023-05-18T21:05:29","slug":"research-scholars","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/biota.org\/index.php\/research-scholars\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Scholars"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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BIOTA Research Scholars<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Current Research Scholars<\/h3>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Dr. Povilas \u0160imonis<\/b><\/h3>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Postdoctoral researcher, University of California, Santa Cruz<\/h3>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Povilas is BAFF research scholar currently working as postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Santa Cruz and a researcher at Bioelectrics laboratory in Centre for Physical Sciences and Technology in Lithuania. His desire to tackle the questions of origins of life inspired him to become second BIOTA research scholar for 2023. His central questions are:  How complexity increases during wet-dry cycling and how information stored in form of polymers could be copied via templating? <\/b>Povilas aims to apply the central BIOTA hot spring
hypothesis<\/i> for the transition from prebiotic chemistry to progenote with ever increasing complexity which is capable of evolution through selection. The investigation will start with simulated urable centre <\/span>[1]<\/span>, analogue of environment where an origin of life may be supported and hypothetical progenote could start exploring landscapes of chemical evolution <\/span>[2]<\/span> leading to complex morphologies as well as developed functions<\/span>[3]<\/span>. Medium composed primarily of lipids and nucleic bases will undergo dehydration procedures leading to remodelling of lipid structures and vesicle formation <\/span>[4]<\/span> which could also induce condensation reactions, formation of oligonucleotides <\/span>[5]<\/span> and possibly templating (hint to replication phenomena). Subsequent rehydrations will act as a testing ground both for polymers which could be degraded via hydrolysis and protocells (vesicles with oligonucleotides inside) which<\/span> could burst due to changes in osmotic conditions. Investigation will include evaluation of polymerization and tempating efficiencies<\/span>, assessment of polymers\u2019 colocalization within membranous compartments, <\/span>their dependence on wet<\/span>-dry cycling parameters like maximum temperature.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

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1.              Deamer, D.; Cary, F.; Damer, B. Urability: A Property of Planetary Bodies That Can Support an Origin of Life. Astrobiology<\/i> 2022<\/b>, 22<\/i>, 889\u2013900, doi:10.1089\/AST.2021.0173.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

2.              Frenkel-Pinter, M. Chemical Evolution Reimagined Available online: https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/361606644_Chemical_Evolution_Reimagined (accessed on Sep 21, 2022).<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

3.             Damer, B.; Deamer, D. The hot spring hypothesis for an origin of life. Astrobiology<\/i> 2020<\/b>, 20<\/i>, 429\u2013452, doi:10.1089\/AST.2019.2045.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

4.             Steller, L.H.; Van Kranendonk, M.J.; Wang, A. Dehydration Enhances Prebiotic Lipid Remodeling and Vesicle Formation in Acidic Environments. ACS Cent. Sci.<\/i> 2022<\/b>, 8<\/i>,
132\u2013139, doi:10.1021\/ACSCENTSCI.1C01365.<\/span><\/p>\n

5.<\/span>             <\/span>Hassenkam, T.; Deamer, D. Visualizing RNA polymers produced by hot wet-dry cycling. <\/span>Sci. Rep.<\/i> <\/span>2022<\/b>, <\/span>12<\/i>, doi:10.1038\/S41598-022-14238-2.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Francesca Cary<\/b><\/h3>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Masters Student, University of Hawai\u2019i at M\u0101noa<\/h3>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Francesca is a Fulbright Scholar currently studying Earth and Planetary Science at the University of Hawai\u2019i at M\u0101noa. She is interested in a pivotal area of astrobiology research, the origin of life, which led to her inclusion in 2021 as the first invited BIOTA research scholar. Her central question is: <\/span>which elements of life today – and likely involved in life\u2019s origins – are universal across chemical and planetary environments? <\/b>Addressing this question would require a shift from the Earth-centric definition of life, and bring us closer to a crisp definition of what characteristics life has, and the jobs life has to accomplish. Given that life ultimately emerged from chemistry, chemical differences in geologic settings between planets that are conducive for life to begin can also suggest what forms it could take.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Francesca comes from Australia with a background in geology and genetics, which has motivated her to combine her knowledge to pursue the idea that characteristics of life today reflect its environment of origin. Francesca aims to apply the central BIOTA <\/span>hot spring hypothesis<\/span><\/i> for the transition from prebiotic chemistry to primitive cellular communities that are capable of evolution through selection, and growth through network collaboration; to see how universally this origin process might apply across worlds in the solar system (and beyond). To start with a world broadley similar to Earth four billion years ago, but with notable differences, Francesca will begin with Mars. Given geologic evidence of terrestrial hot spring settings found on Mars, she will start with simulating Martian analog chemistry in these settings to test and compare whether geochemically plausible differences between the two planets could affect how life may have emerged on Mars. She will apply the results of these experiments to suggest how life on Mars could potentially have deviated from the evolutionary trajectory taken by life on Earth. Saturn\u2019s moon Titan, a world with truly \u2018alien chemistry\u2019, is a compelling place to further test hypotheses of how a radically different environment might influence the life forms that might plausibly emerge there. A Titan environment could be a more illustrative test of the universality of chemical requirements we think life needs to start, as it is so chemically different from Earth or Mars. If there is a narrow range of requirements that life needs to originate, actually simulating and testing a variety of \u2018candidate requirements\u2019 across truly different worlds can establish the constraints on this range. This work is centrally important to the development underway surrounding \u201c<\/span>urability<\/b>\u201d, a new term defining a set of parameters for worlds and environments where an origin of life may be supported (Damer & Deamer, in preparation).<\/span><\/p>

Francesca is also a student collaborator on the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover working with the Mastcam-Z instrument team. She aspires that as a result of her involvement in the mission, her future research will have a lens that will help determine where and how to look for life elsewhere. With her current interests and BIOTA collaboration, she also hopes to gain a better understanding of how future missions searching for life could be constructed based on the new principles of urability, rather than the more broad definition of habitability for life as we know it. Furthermore, taking an origins approach to the possibilities for life to emerge in different chemistries expands the search towards life as we <\/span>don\u2019t <\/span><\/i>know it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Francesca has the following research foci:<\/p>