Florida scientists seek knowledge about early life on Earth after the Chilean expedition

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BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Making a discovery that could deepen our understanding of the early evolution of life on Earth, a research team including Associate Professor Andrew Palmer and graduate student Caitlyn Hubric, identified the deepest and northernmost cold seep in Chile holes in the ocean floor that emit gases and fluids, about 100 miles off the Chilean coast and thousands of feet below the surface.

This most terrestrial discovery could also provide information that could prove useful in future space exploration, Palmer said.

Palmer, who runs the astrobiology and chemical ecology lab at Florida Tech, and Hubric, who has studied with him for the past three years, represented the university on the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) expedition through the Atacama Trench.

The trench is an almost 5-mile-deep ocean trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean that has remained at the same latitude for the past 150 million years, suggesting an extremely stable and potentially ancient ecosystem.

According to SOI, leaks from the trench, found at a depth of 2,836 meters (9,304 feet), provide chemical energy to deep-sea animals that live without sunlight. Leaks like this one can help astrobiologists understand how life evolved on Earth and how survival strategies and chemical conditions can sustain life on other planets.

Palmer and Hubric were members of the expedition’s microbiology team and were specifically looking for biosignatures. This meant searching for new microbes and chemical signatures, such as proteins and carbohydrates, that may have existed in the region for millions of years.

In the wet lab, graduate student Caitlyn Hubric processes water in a ship’s laboratory during a research expedition.

The benefits of their research extend beyond life on Earth. They can also shape future space exploration. Hubric said the main reason for studying aquatic ecosystems is the popularity around Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa.

She said it’s not a perfect analogue, but it’s close enough that you can look for patterns in how the chemical processes taking place in these places work.

“We hope that some of the questions we answer here will help us in future efforts when we finally explore the solar system,” Hubric said.

After returning to campus after the expedition, which lasted from May 24 to June 6, they began working to solve these questions by identifying the molecules driving the search for life and learning the limitations of instruments that can detect metabolites or early signatures of life, Palmer said.

“If (the instruments) can’t successfully identify signs of life on Earth, where we know there is plenty of life, how will they fare in a place where it is less likely to occur than a needle in a haystack?” Palmer said.

“The bigger question is: What do we have to do to succeed in our search for life?”

For Palmer and Hubric, the research has only just begun. They will test water and sediment samples as well as the filtrate removed from water filters, and they will also look for interesting microorganisms. Palmer said the search for new metabolisms will be an even more complex process.

“It’s weird doing something that you don’t see for weeks or months,” Palmer said. “This is just the beginning.”

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