Index

Did life come from elsewhere?

Was life seeded deliberately?

Should we spread life beyond Earth?

“If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which

will not, speak then unto me.”

- Shakespeare, Macbeth

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Foreword

Breakthrough Discuss

Code of Conduct

06 Schedule

08 Presenters, Panelists & Chairs

28 Committee

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Foreword

This year’s conference is focused on the fascinating

and controversial concept of the ‘Migration of Life in

the Universe’. We will hear from experts on three key

questions. First, what is the evidence that life can

move between worlds in our solar system? Perhaps

most significantly, can life migrate over interstellar

distances? The recent discovery of the first interstellar

object, ‘Oumuamua, makes this question all the

more timely. Secondly, we will explore how modern

genomics can be used to detect life, and whether

highly-evolved DNA-based life might have seeded the

Earth. Even more intriguing, we also examine whether

an extraterrestrial intelligence might have played a

role in this process in a concept known as ‘directed

panspermia’ - and how we might look for traces of

such a process. Finally, humanity is now beginning

to develop programs that could deliver probes to

the nearest star systems. This opens the question of

whether we ourselves can direct the spread of life

through the galaxy – and whether we should.

These questions parallel the three main directions of

the Breakthrough Initiatives: Breakthrough Watch,

an optical search for life-bearing exoplanets around

nearby stars; Breakthrough Listen, a comprehensive

search for technosignatures; and Breakthrough

Starshot, a technology development program which

could enable us to send probes to the nearest star

systems for close-up exploration of these questions.

This year we are focusing on some of the key bio-

science aspects of our quests. I am pleased that

our attendance at this year’s Breakthrough Discuss

reflects the growing, and diverse, interest in these big

questions - diverse with regard to both the individuals

and the fields represented.

We do not yet have proof that life can leap between

planets. But we do know that ideas can leap between

minds. I hope that this year’s conference proves a

fertile ground in which new ideas about some of the

most exciting questions in science will take seed, grow

and spread.

Best Wishes,

S. Pete Worden

A warm welcome to Breakthrough Discuss 2019. I hope

that the conference will once again be stimulating,

challenging and - no doubt like the Universe itself -

bursting with life. I’d particularly like to thank the

Department of Astronomy at University of California,

Berkeley for hosting this year’s conference, and

our co-hosts, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for

Astrophysics, NASA Astrobiology Institute and the

NASA Ames Research Center.

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Breakthrough DiscussMigration of Life in the Universe

Humanity may well be on the verge of discovering life elsewhere in the Universe. We are certainly close to being able to spread life into the solar system. If life is found elsewhere, one of the most urgent questions will be its origin. We will want to know if we share a common origin: was this life transferred to or from Earth, or did life arise independently on each world? The possibility that life can or might be transported among planets, star systems, and galaxies frames the major questions being explored at Breakthrough Discuss 2019.

Session One

Migration of Life in the UniverseChairs: Penelope Boston (NASA), Lindy Elkins-Tanton (ASU)

A decade of exoplanet discoveries has revealed that, statistically, about 25% of stars host at least one temperate rocky planet of around one-to-four Earth radii – just right for life as we know it. Perhaps life could evolve independently from simple chemistry on each of these planets. But ample evidence exists for comet or meteor strikes on planetary surfaces transferring material between the planets in the Solar System. This raises the possibility of life as a communicable microbial infection between planets. And the exchange of life between planets could even be galactic in scope: the surprising discovery of abundant Neptune-sized exoplanets at small orbital radii, where they are unlikely to have formed, suggests that large planet migration is common - and that this would result in the frequent ejection of other planets from these systems. Such interstellar rogue planets are an ideal vehicle for the transfer of life across the galaxy. The interstellar object ‘Oumuamua may be an example of such an ejection. Is there sufficient movement among planetary and interstellar bodies for life to migrate between them? Can life survive interplanetary, or even interstellar transit?

Session Two

Search for Extraterrestrial GenomesChairs: Drew Endy (Stanford), Gary Ruvkun (Mass General, Harvard)

Astrobiology dogma assumes that life evolved from a primordial soup of chemicals on the early Earth via an RNA world to the current DNA world. But an alternative view is that these steps occurred on another planetary body more than 4 billion years ago, and that highly-evolved DNA-based life seeded the Earth as soon as it was habitable. If complex microbial life has been transferred between planets and planetary systems, the single-molecule sensitivity tools of modern genomics can be used to detect life. SETI projects can also look for DNA sequences in aperiodic transmissions. Migration of DNA-based life between star systems could be a simple natural phenomenon, or it could have been directed, just as terraforming by microbial inoculation may be the next step in the colonization of Mars. And if life on Earth was intentionally seeded, are there messages embedded in genomes for the evolved molecular geneticists and astrophysicists, 4 billion years later, to decode?

Session Three

Emigration of Earth LifeChairs: Kate Adamala (UMN), Sara Walker (ASU)

Even with contemporary chemical rockets, humankind has the ability to send objects throughout the galaxy – if we take a long enough view. Travelling at just 30 km/sec, one could journey halfway across the galaxy – 50,000 light years – in 500 million years. Advances in propulsion technology, such as photon-driven lightsails, could reduce that number drastically; and the natural mixing of stars in the galactic disk would allow an even faster transfer. Thus, with breakthroughs in bioengineering and nanotechnology, it is conceivable that human civilization will possess the technology to populate planets around the nearest stars within the next century with some form of life. How would we begin transporting engineered biological or bio-mechanical systems off Earth? Can we communicate across interstellar distances using electromagnetic or biological methods? And - perhaps most importantly - should we?

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Code of ConductThe Breakthrough Discuss conference is dedicated to fostering a safe environment where ideas flow freely, which means ensuring a harassment-free conference experience for all in attendance. No harassment of any kind towards any conference participants (including venue staff, etc.) will be tolerated during conference programming, breaks, or at any other conference-related event(s). Harassing behaviors include, but are not limited to, offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, race, age, religion, disability, physical appearance, national origin, etc., as well as deliberate intimidation; harassing photography, recording, or postings; sustained disruption of talks or other events; inappropriate physical contact; and unwelcome sexual attention. If a participant engages in any harassing behavior, event organizers retain the right to take any actions to maintain a welcoming, safe environment for all participants. These actions include, but are not limited to, warning the alleged offender or expulsion from the conference and any associated event. If anyone experiences or witnesses any form of harassment at any point during any of the conference events, please contact:

initiatives@breakthroughprize.org

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T H U R S D AY, 1 1 .0 4 . 2 0 1 9

8:00 Registration - Breakfast

9:00 Welcome - Hosts Charles AlcockPenelope BostonJamie DrewPaul KalasS. Pete Worden

9:15 Keynote: From Lava Worlds to Living Worlds Natalie Batalha

10:00 Session One: The Migration of Life in the Universe Chairs: Penelope Boston, Lindy Elkins-Tanton

10:10 Searching for the “Laws of Life”: A Guidebook for Reprogramming Planets Sara Walker

10:30 Testing the Habitable Zone Concept Jade Checlair

10:50 Solar System Shake-up: How Planet Migration Rearranged Our System Kat Volk

11:10 Break

11:25 Life on Small Bodies Lindy Elkins-Tanton

11:45 Did Martian Meteorites Seed Life on Earth? Ben Weiss

12:05 Lithopanspermia: Sic Itur ad Astra Steinn Sigurðsson

12:25 Lunch

13:40 Panel One: The Migration of Life in the Universe Chairs: Penelope Boston

Bill Bottke

David Catling

Ben Clark

Lindy Elkins-Tanton

Karen Meech

Jay Melosh

15:00 Break

15:10 Session Two: Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes Chairs: Drew Endy, Gary Ruvkun

15:20 What is True for E. coli on Earth Will Be True for Life on Proxima Centauri b Gary Ruvkun

15:40 It Could Happen Here: Evolution of Protein Synthesis (and Life) from an RNA World

Harry Noller

16:00 Generating Cellular Energy: the Marvels and Diversity of the Nanoturbine, ATP Synthase

Karen Davies

16:20 Break

16:30 Our First Contact with Alien Life Will Come in a Chemistry Laboratory Steven Benner

16:50 Genomics and the Evolution of Intelligence David Haussler

17:10 Should We Search for Messages from Extraterrestrial Intelligences in Terrestrial Genomes?

Drew Endy

17:30 Concluding Remarks

17:40 Adjourn

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8:30 Registration - Breakfast

9:00 Welcome S. Pete Worden

9:10 Keynote: Bringing Synthetic Cells to Space? Marileen Dogterom

9:50 Break

10:05 Panel Two: Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes Chairs: Drew Endy, Gary Ruvkun

Adam Arkin

Penelope Boston

Jamie Cate

Michael Finney

Donald Goldsmith

Kevin Hard

11:30 Lunch

12:30 Session Three: Emigration of Life from Earth Chairs: Kate Adamala, Sara Walker

12:40 Things Behind the Sun: Proxima Strikes Again Mario Damasso & Fabio Del Sordo

13:00 First Aggregation, Then Life Sarah Maurer

13:20 No Trash! Biomanufacturing for In-Flight Resource Recapturing & Repurposing

Heath Mills

13:40 Break

13:50 Getting to Mars – and Surviving Upon Arrival Aaron Engelhart

14:10 Interstellar Communication Using Microbes: Implications for SETI Robert Zubrin

14:30 Life, but Not Alive Kate Adamala

14:50 Break

15:00 Panel Three: Emigration of Life from Earth Chairs: Kate Adamala, Sara Walker

15:10 (Panel discussion) Tanya Harrison

RP Oates

Megan Palmer

Andrew Pohorille

Lynn Rothschild

16:20 Concluding Remarks

16:35 Adjourn

F R I D AY, 1 2 .0 4 . 2 0 1 9

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Kate Adamala

Title:Life, but Not Alive

Abstract:

All of biological research was done on a single sample: that of modern, terrestrial life.

Establishing a biosphere elsewhere, in and beyond the Solar system, will require expanding the capacities of terrestrial biochemistry, developing technologies for remote transfer of biological information, and adaptation to extreme conditions beyond the limits of our own highly optimized life forms. This requires changing the chassis: instead of pushing the cell beyond its natural limits, it might be necessary to fundamentally redesign them. In the quest to engineer synthetic living systems, we seek versatile, lineage agnostic organisms.

Synthetic cells are fully definable, enabling studies of natural processes with a level of detail previously unavailable. This new chassis for biological studies allows broader understanding of our own biology, and for investigating alternatives to the single known life form. With those programmable, fully controllable bioreactors, we can develop technologies that are required to seed life under the most extreme conditions.

Presenters, Panelists & Chairs

Bio:

Dr. Kate Adamala is a biochemist working on building cell-like bioreactors that mimic live organisms. She is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. Her research group aims at using those cell mimics, aka synthetic cells, to develop new tools for bioengineering, drug development and for understanding how biology works. Kate’s research spans questions from the origin and earliest evolution of life, through using synthetic biology to colonize space, to the future of biotechnology and medicine. www.protobiology.org.

Adam Arkin

Bio:

Dr. Adam Arkin is the Dean A. Richard Newton Memorial Professor in the Dept of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley and Senior Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He and his laboratory develop experimental and computational technologies for discovery, prediction, control and design of microbial and viral functions and behaviors in environmental contexts. His work spans synthetic and systems biology, genomics, metagenomics, and physiology. He is the chief scientist of the Department of Energy Scientific Focus Area, ENIGMA, designed to understand, at a molecular level, the impact of microbial communities on their ecosystems with specific focus on terrestrial communities in contaminated watersheds. He also directs the Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase program, an open platform for comparative functional genomics, systems and synthetic biology for microbes, plants and their communities, and for sharing results and methods with other scientists. He is director of the newly announced Center for Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space which seeks microbial and plant-based biological solutions for in situ resource utilization that would reduce the launch mass, and improve reliability and quality of food, pharmaceuticals, fuels and materials, for a mission to Mars.

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Natalie Batalha

Title:From Lava Worlds to Living Worlds

Abstract:

NASA recently announced the end of an era. After nine years of operation, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft will be retired, but not without making an indelible imprint on humankind’s understanding of the universe. Perhaps its greatest legacy is the knowledge that planets outnumber stars in the galaxy. With over 2,500 planet discoveries and another 2,000 awaiting confirmation, Kepler revealed a staggering diversity of worlds, turning sci-fi fantasy into scientific reality. It also changed our collective perspective regarding the feasibility of finding evidence of life beyond Earth and catalyzed efforts across the globe to reach that goal. Dr. Batalha will describe the scientific legacy of Kepler Mission and current efforts to accelerate the search for life.

Bio:

Dr. Natalie Batalha is a recent addition to the faculty of Astronomy & Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz where she’s using ground and space-based observatories to detect and characterize planets orbiting other stars in the galaxy, with the ultimate goal of finding evidence of life beyond the Solar System. She comes to UCSC from NASA Ames where she led the science team for NASA’s Kepler mission from 2011 to 2017. Batalha was involved with the Kepler Mission since the proposal stage and contributed to many different aspects of the science, from studying the stars themselves to detecting and understanding the planets they harbor. She led Kepler’s first efforts to generate its high reliability catalogs of planet detections. She also led the analysis that yielded the discovery in 2011 of Kepler-10b — the mission’s first confirmation of a rocky planet outside our solar system. For her work on Kepler, Batalha was awarded a NASA Public Service Medal (2011) and the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award (2017). In 2017, Batalha was named one of the 100 Most Influential People of the World by TIME Magazine. Currently,

Dr. Batalha is leading the science community’s efforts to take some of the first observations of exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope scheduled to launch in 2021. As one of the co-leads of NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet Systems Science, Dr. Batalha works to catalyze multi-disciplinary research related to the search for evidence of life beyond the solar system. Batalha received her bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy from UC Berkeley and her doctorate in astrophysics in 1997 from UC Canta Cruz.

Steven Benner

Title:Our First Contact with Alien Life Will Come in a Chemistry Laboratory

Abstract:

Human bias arising from two centuries of the analysis of the molecular details of terran life constrain our ability to look for a “second example” of life throughout the cosmos, as well as our ability to recognize it if we were to encounter it. Analysis of a second example would clearly help us understand what “life” is at a fundamental level. In our search for extraterrestrials, it is difficult to design a molecular detection architecture to detect chemical species whose structures we do not know beforehand. Therefore, we are biased to look for extraterrestrial life only of the type that has a molecular platform near or identical to the platform that we ourselves share with all known life on Earth. While some evidence suggests that life will universally share some of those molecular platform features, more evidence suggests that, absent common ancestry and parallel evolution, the molecular search will miss its likely mark. This leads to an alternative path to encountering a second example of life: to make one ourselves in our laboratories. This project too is biased by our two centuries of experience, but here those biases can be defined and managed without the difficulties of space exploration. This talk will review progress towards

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encountering a second example of life in the laboratory, how biases might be mitigated, and how this “grand challenge” project might help us search for extraterrestrial alien life as well.

Bio:

Dr. Steven Benner heads the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, which he founded after faculty stints at Harvard, ETH Zurich, and University of Florida. His research combines two traditions in science, one from natural history, the other from the physical sciences. In making this combination, his laboratory was among the first to do large-scale DNA synthesis and to redesign DNA and RNA to better understand how these molecules work, and what form they might take in alien life. To understand how DNA and its encoded proteins evolved on Earth, he developed the first web-based bioinformatics tools, the first modern biosequence databases, and the first evolution-based tools to predict how proteins fold. To bring experimental methods to bear on evolution, he initiated the field of paleogenetics, resurrecting ancient proteins from extinct organisms for study in the laboratory. His work has had an impact on commerce and the public, through its launch of several biotechnology companies whose products personalize the care of HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C patients, detect insect-borne pathogens, and discover new drugs. The work also guides NASA missions seeking alien life and models for life’s origins in the cosmos. His most recent book is “Life, the Universe, and the Scientific Method.”

Penelope Boston

Bio:See on page 28

Bill BottkeBio:

Dr. Bill Bottke is the Director of the Department for Space Studies at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. He is also the Director of the Institute for the Science of Exploration Targets (ISET) of NASA’s SSERVI Institute. His interests include planet formation, the nature of the early Solar System, and the evolution of asteroids, comets, and meteorites. He received a Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona in 1995, was a Texaco Prize postdoctoral fellow at Caltech in 1996-1997, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University from 1997-2000. Bottke received the “Paolo Farinella Award” for his small bodies research in 2011, he gave the Shoemaker Lecture at the American Geophysical Union meeting in 2015, he became a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society in 2016, and he gave the Kavli Lecture at the 229th American Astronomical Society meeting in 2017. He is currently on the science teams for three NASA missions: OSIRIS-REx, Lucy, and Psyche. Bottke has also served as lead editor of the University of Arizona book “Asteroids III” (2002) and as co-editor on “Asteroids IV” (2015).

Jamie H. D. CateBio:

Dr. Jamie Cate has a longstanding interest in understanding how the ribosome translates the genetic code into proteins.

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His lab probed the structures of the ribosome from the bacterium Escherichia coli to reveal universal mechanisms of translation, and to understand how antibiotics impact these mechanisms. His lab now uses cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM), biochemical and biophysical methods to probe the structure and function of the E. coli ribosome for synthetic biology applications. A second major focus in his lab is the study of human translation, focusing on the role of human translation initiation factor eIF3 and on ribosome stalling mechanisms. Using biochemical and structural biology, his lab has revealed fundamental mechanisms of human translation initiation, including the discovery of a 5’-m7G mRNA cap-binding activity in human eIF3 and eIF3-mediated regulation of specific mRNAs. In collaboration with Pfizer, his lab also revealed a new molecular mechanism of action for small molecules that can selectively stall protein synthesis on the ribosome. Dr. Cate received his Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University. After a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fund Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, he joined the faculty of MIT as an Associate Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He is now Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. His research has been recognized with a Searle Scholar Award, AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, and the Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award from The Protein Society. He is also a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

David Catling

Bio:

Dr. David Catling is a professor in the Departmentof Earth & Space Sciences and the cross-campus Astrobiology Program at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is a planetary scientist whose research interests concern the evolution of planetary atmospheres and surfaces, and the

potential of planets for life. After completing a doctorate in atmospheric, oceanic and planetary physics at the University of Oxford in 1994, he was a researcher in planetary science and astrobiology at NASA’s Ames Research Center from 1995–2001 before joining the faculty at the University of Washington. He has been involved in NASA’s exploration of Mars and done research about the habitability of other solar system bodies and biosignatures on exoplanets. He has also worked on understanding how the Earth’s environment changed over the planet’s 4.5 billion year history by combining expertise in biogeochemistry and atmospheric sciences. He is the author of the book, “Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction” (2013) and the research-level monograph, “Atmospheric Evolution on Inhabited and Lifeless Worlds” (2017).

Jade Checlair

Title:Testing the Habitable Zone Concept

Abstract:

The habitable zone concept is commonly used to characterize exoplanet observations and discuss their potential for habitability. However, its assumptions, predictions, and boundaries have not been observationally tested. One particularly important assumption of traditional habitable zone theory is that silicate-weathering feedback regulates the atmospheric CO2 of planets within the habitable zone to maintain surface temperatures that allow for liquid water. There is some non-definitive evidence that this feedback has worked in Earth’s history, but it is untested in an exoplanet context. A critical prediction of the silicate-weathering feedback hypothesis is that, on average, within the habitable zone planets that receive a higher stellar flux should have a lower CO2 in order to maintain liquid water at their surface. We can test this prediction directly by using a statistical approach involving low-precision CO2 measurements on

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many planets with future observing facilities such as LUVOIR or HabEx. Testing the habitable zone concept is important for the viability of panspermia, because if habitable zone theory is incorrect, it is very unlikely that multiple planets orbiting the same star could be habitable and exchange life.

Bio:

Dr. Jade Checlair was born and raised in Brussels, Belgium, where she grew up speaking French. After high school, she moved to Canada to study physics at the University of Toronto and received her B.Sc. in 2016. She moved to Chicago that same year to pursue her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in the department of the geophysical sciences. There she is developing statistical habitability tests that could be used with future NASA direct imaging instruments (LUVOIR and/or HabEx). In particular, she is interested in ways to test the concept of the habitable zone and its boundaries using large samples of exoplanets.

Ben Clark

Bio:

Dr. Ben Clark is Senior Research Scientist at the Space Science Institute (Boulder, CO). Previously, he was Chief Scientist for Space Exploration Systems (SES), Lockheed Martin (LM). He has over 50 years’ experience in space sciences, astrobiology, and development of advanced missions. He is a Participating Scientist for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission and a member of the Science Teams for the Mars MSL rover, Curiosity, and the upcoming rover, M2020. Currently he is also a member of the OSIRIS-REx mission to the carbonaceous, active asteroid Bennu. Previously, he was a Co-Investigator on the Stardust, Genesis, and Phoenix missions.

Dr. Clark conceived the spectrometers for geochemical analyses of Martian soil samples onboard the Viking landers.

He was Co-Investigator on the Giotto mission to Comet Halley where he discovered organic-rich grains (“CHON” particles) among the more preponderant cosmic-composition particles.

For four years, he chaired the External Advisory Committee for NASA’s NSCORT for Exobiology at UCSD and the Salk Institute. He has also been a committee member of three NRC Studies, related to Mars and Europa, and consulted for three other NRC studies, as well as consulting to JPL, LPI, APL, CIT, NASA/Hq and academic groups.

Mario Damasso

Title:Things Behind the Sun: Proxima Strikes Again

Bio:

Dr. Mario Damasso got his PhD in Astronomy at the University of Padova, and for 5 years has been a research fellow at the Astrophysical Observatory of Torino (National Institute for Astrophysics).

His main interests are in the detection and characterization of exoplanets and the impact of stellar activity on radial velocity data. He works with the high-resolution spectrograph HARPS-N as a member of the GAPS and GTO programs. Recently, he has become a collaborator of the GTO consortium of the ESPRESSO spectrograph.

Damasso has an Academic Masters in Science Communication, and has always been enthusiastically involved in education and outreach activities.

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Karen Davies

Title:Generating Cellular Energy: the Marvels and Diversity of the Nanoturbine, ATP Synthase

Abstract:

Adenosine triphosphate, ATP, is the universal energy current of all life on earth. With a molecular weight of just ~507Da, ATP powers nearly every single biological process in a living cell. To ensure continuation of life, a cell must maintain a constant supply of ATP. The vast majority of ATP is synthesized by the F-type ATP synthase using energy captured from the sun, the breakdown of food or other metabolic processes. Using recent advances in electron cryo-microscopy, I will discuss the wondrous architecture of the F-type ATP synthase and how it’s turbine like structure is optimally designed to remake ATP from it’s breakdown products of adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and inorganic phosphate. Furthermore, I will discuss the predicted origins of the ATP synthase and the structural diversity of the ATP synthase observed throughout the evolution of life on earth.

Bio:

Karen Davies became a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California Berkeley in February 2016. She received her BA(Hons) and DPhil from St John’s College, Oxford, UK and completed her postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Karen is an international expert in electron cryo-tomography and sub-tomogram averaging. She uses her bioimaging skills to investigate the biogenesis of mitochondria and chloroplasts. Her specific focus is on how the spatial arrangement and interactions of proteins in bioenergetic membranes influence energy production but also how electron transfer reactions

enhance CO2 uptake in photosynthetic organisms. She was recently award the DOE early career award for her research on photosynthesis.

Fabio Del Sordo

Title:Things Behind the Sun: Proxima Strikes Again

Bio:

Dr. Fabio Del Sordo was born in Campobasso, in southern Italy, and currently lives in Crete. He received his PhD in astrophysics from Stockholm University, where he studied astrophysical dynamos and magnetic fields. His interest in the detection and characterization of exoplanets arose during his postdoc at Yale, where he started developing new methods for analysing time series as well as working on Proxima Centauri.

He is co-founder of GalileoMobile, an international astronomy outreach initiative that has visited schools in 20 countries around the world and with which he produced 4 documentaries.

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Marileen Dogterom

Title:Bringing Synthetic Cells to Space?

Abstract:

One of the potential forms of life that we could consider taking away from Earth in the future is a simple form of artificial life. I will present collaborative research efforts in Europe, and the Netherlands in particular, that are aimed at building artificial cellular life from scratch. Many challenges remain, but success in building such synthetic cells would not only provide a route towards a fundamental understanding of how cells work, but also enable us to design and build simple controllable forms of life that could find their way into many application areas, potentially on other planets as well.

Bio:

Dr. Marileen Dogterom was trained as a theoretical physicist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She was a PhD student in Paris and Princeton until 1994 and then a postdoc at Bell Labs. In 1997 she started her own independent research group in experimental biophysics at the AMOLF Institute in Amsterdam, where she was a group leader and later department head until 2014. Since then she has been professor and chair of the department of Bionanoscience at the Technical University of Delft. She was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016, where she has been a board member since 2017. In 2018 she was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest award in Dutch science. Her main interests are in the biophysical properties of the cytoskeleton and the reconstitution of cytoskeletal machineries in artificial cell-like confinement. Since 2017 she has led a Dutch research consortium consisting of 17 groups from 6 different institutions that aims to build a synthetic cell from scratch, supported by a 10-year research program funded by the Dutch government. In addition, she is leading an initiative to unite the research and technology efforts in this area within Europe.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton

Title:Life on Small Bodies

Abstract:

Small bodies, including comets, asteroids, and some rocky or icy moons, may have had the conditions for the initiation of life. In particular we are interested in planetesimals that grew rapidly in the earliest years of the solar system to hundreds or thousands of kilometers in radius. A short-lived radioisotope of aluminum provided sufficient heat for the formation of liquid water (and in some cases, temperatures sufficient to melt silicates), and asteroids show that a wide variety of organic matter was also available. Comets and rogue planets are also candidates to harbor warm, organic-rich environments with liquid water. We have calculated the timescales for the presence of liquid water and the depths at which it was likely to be.

Bio:

Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton is the Principal Investigator of the NASA Psyche mission, Director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, co-chair of the Interplanetary Initiative at ASU, and co-founder of Beagle Learning, a tech company training and measuring collaborative problem-solving and critical thinking. Elkins-Tanton received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from MIT. Together we are working toward a positive space exploration future, and toward creating a generation of problem-solvers.

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Drew Endy

Title:Should We Search for Messages from Extraterrestrial Intelligences in Terrestrial Genomes?

Abstract:

For 40 years scientists have wondered if messages from extraterrestrial intelligence(s) might be encoded in the DNA of natural living systems found here on Earth. Compared to other methods of interstellar messaging, DNA-encoded messages could have the advantages of being auto-amplifying and blanketing across space and time (i.e., everywhere and persistent). However, to date, no DNA-encoded messages have been found and reported. It could be that no such messages exist. But, it is also true that we haven’t been looking. More recently, advances in DNA synthesis have enabled humans to produce ever more examples of encoding arbitrary abiotic messages in synthetic DNA. Additionally, genetic code and genome refactoring and rewriting efforts have hinted at new ways of thinking about encoding messages within designer DNA. However, it is still not obvious how to encode messages that will, much later, be meaningfully received in the context of an evolving milieu. I will lay out the history, facts, and latest possibilities, aiming to suggest what might best be practically pursued next.

Bio:

Dr. Drew Endy serves as Associate Chair of Education in Bioengineering at Stanford University. His research teams pioneered amplifying genetic logic, rewritable DNA data storage, reliably-reuseable standard biological parts, and genome refactoring. Dr. Endy helped launch the new undergraduate majors in bioengineering at both MIT and Stanford; he also co-founded the iGEM competition, a global genetic engineering “olympics” now engaging thousands of students annually (igem.org). In 2013 the White House recognized Dr. Endy for his work on open-

source biotechnology and, more recently, he received an honorary doctorate from the Technische Universiteit Delft. He has served on the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity and the standing committee on Science, Technology, & Law; he currently serves on the World Health Organization’s Smallpox Advisory Committee. Dr. Endy was a co-founder of Gen9, Inc., a DNA construction company; he returned to serve as a director while Gen9 was successfully acquired. He worked briefly with the Rapid Evaluation team at Google [X] and also served on the project team for the Shriram Center at Stanford. He is a founding co-director of the NIST/Stanford Joint Initiative for Metrology in Biology (jimb.stanford.edu). Esquire magazine recognized Dr. Endy as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century.

Aaron Engelhart

Title:Getting to Mars – and Surviving Upon Arrival

Abstract:

Current technology for transportation to Mars relies on a Hohmann transfer – transferring a payload from Earth’s orbit to that of Mars. This takes six to nine months – in the range of a typical stay on the ISS. Microgravity has been known for several decades to have effects on biochemical processes, and new data from the 2015 NASA Twins Study, including the observation that microbiomes exhibit changes under extended exposure to microgravity, continues to provide evidence demonstrating the profound influence of microgravity on living things. What about when Mars is seeded with life? Mars has frequently been invoked as a potential environment for either the emergence of life or the capacity to host Earth-like life. This is due to several factors, including its surface regolith containing elements critical to life on Earth, such as magnesium and sodium, as well as evidence for the presence of liquid water – both past and

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present. In other areas, however, Mars differs from Earth, such as the abundant presence of highly oxidized chlorine compounds, such as perchlorates. These compounds present a double-edged sword – they have been invoked as a possible natural resource for terraforming and oxygen generation, yet they are toxic to existing life and they exert profound effects on the function of key components of life, such as enzymes. I will discuss the biochemical impacts of microgravity, as well as the unique geochemical environment of Mars and its implications for the emigration of life from Earth and ability of Mars to support emigrated Terran life.

Bio:

Dr. Aaron Engelhart is an expert on the origins and early evolution of life. His training was at Arizona State University (Ian Gould), Georgia Institute of Technology (Nick Hud), and Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital (Jack Szostak). He was selected as a NASA Astrobiology Postdoctoral Fellow in 2011, and a Tosteson Postdoctoral Fellow (Massachusetts General Hospital Executive Committee on Research) in 2014. In 2016, he established his laboratory at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development. He was named Stanley Miller Early Career Fellow by the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life in 2017.

Supported by the NASA Astrobiology program, his research focuses on how life first emerged on Earth and other planets, with particular interest in Martian scenarios for the emergence of life. Another aim in his laboratory is the development of genetically encoded fluorescent RNA tags for imaging of RNA within living organisms, as well as for detection of microbes in field and space applications. His research group was part of the RockSat-C 2018 mission, in which they performed the first RNA folding experiment using a fluorescent aptamer in low-orbit spaceflight-induced microgravity.

Michael Finney

Bio:

While earning his Ph.D. at MIT with Bob Horvitz, Dr. Michael Finney co-founded his first company, MJ Research, a manufacturer of genomic instruments and reagents. After completing postdoctoral research with Gary Ruvkun at Harvard Medical School, he went completely over to the dark side, and has been involved with numerous companies in fields such as vaccines, cancer immunotherapy, genomic technology, and agricultural biotechnology. He currently serves on the board of directors of five privately-held companies and one public company. He co-founded and serves on the board of The Genome Partnership, a nonprofit that runs the AGBT conferences on genomic technology.

Donald Goldsmith

Bio:

Dr. Donald Goldsmith is the author or co-author of fifteen books on astronomy, and has worked on documentary television programs that include Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos,” Neil Tyson’s “Cosmos,” “The Astronomers,” and the NOVA program “Is Anybody Out There?” with Lily Tomlin. Dr. Goldsmith lives in Berkeley, California.

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Kevin Peter Hand

Bio:

Dr. Kevin Peter Hand is a planetary scientist/astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. His research focuses on the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the solar system with an emphasis on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. His work involves both theoretical and laboratory research on the physics and chemistry of icy moons in the outer solar system. Hand is the Director of the Ocean Worlds Lab at JPL. He served as co-chair for NASA’s Europa Lander Science Definition team and he is the Project Scientist for the Pre-Phase-A Europa Lander mission. From 2011 to 2016 he served as Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration at JPL. He served as a member of the National Academies Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences. His work has brought him to the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, the sea ice near the North Pole, the depths of the Earth’s oceans, and to the glaciers of Kilimanjaro. Dr. Hand was a scientist onboard James Cameron’s 2012 dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and he was part of a 2003 IMAX expedition to hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He has made nine dives to the bottom of the ocean. In 2011 he was selected as a National Geographic Explorer. Hand earned his PhD from Stanford University and bachelors degrees from Dartmouth College. He was born and raised in Manchester, Vermont.

Tanya Harrison

Bio:

Dr. Tanya Harrison calls herself a “professional martian.” She has spent the last decade working as a scientist and in mission operations on multiple NASA Mars missions, including the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers. Her specialty lies in geomorphology: the study of a planet’s evolution based on its surface features. Before Mars, however, Tanya had her head in the stars as an astronomer studying the metal content of star clusters and recurring novae systems. She holds a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Western Ontario, a Masters in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Wesleyan University, and a B.Sc. in Astronomy and Physics from the University of Washington. Currently she is the Director of Research for Arizona State University’s Space Technology and Science (“NewSpace”) Initiative. Tanya is also an advocate for advancing the status of women in science and for accessibility in the geosciences. You can find her prolifically tweeting about the Red Planet—and her experiences with both #WomenInSTEM and #DisabledInSTEM—as @tanyaofmars.

David Haussler

Title:Genomics and the Evolution of Intelligence

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Abstract:

We are currently only what evolution made us. But technology is changing this. Our interactions with the Internet, with AI and with each other on a global scale are changing how our minds work. To understand where we or other civilizations like ours might go, we need to first understand where we came from. I will briefly review 3.8 billion years of genome evolution and mention some changes in our genomes in the last 3 million years that made our brains different from those of our ancestors. Something happened then that pushed us across a threshold so that going forward we will accelerate our own brain evolution. Might something similar happen in other corners of the galaxy?

Bio:

Dr. David Haussler develops statistical, algorithmic and experimental methods to explore molecular function and evolution in the human genome, integrating comparative and high-throughput genomics data to study gene structure, function, and regulation. In the 1990s, he pioneered the use in genomics of hidden Markov models, stochastic context-free grammars, neural networks and discriminative kernel methods, building some of the most successful computational methods to find genes in genome sequences and align them to detect evolutionary changes. As collaborators on the international Human Genome Project, his team created the first publicly available computational assembly of the human genome sequence and posted it on the Internet on July 7, 2000. They subsequently developed the UCSC Genome Browser, a web-based tool that is used extensively in biomedical research (>1M page hits per day). His experimental research focuses on the molecular evolution of DNA, RNA, and protein sequences with a special emphasis on neurodevelopment. His lab uses CRISPR, cortical organoid, single cell RNA-seq and other technologies to functionally characterize neurodevelopmental genes that were specifically altered in human evolution. Dr. Haussler received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of AAAS and AAAI.

Sarah Maurer

Title:First Aggregation, Then Life

Abstract:

Cells formed on Earth from a diverse mixture of chemicals that arose spontaneously from geological and interstellar processes. The emergence of complex processes from simple chemicals should be reproducible in the laboratory today. Aggregates of these chemicals would easily have formed on early Earth, and likely went through cycles of heating, drying, dilution, and mixing. Through these processes, we think that early life, or perhaps pre-life, emerged. One primary component of these aggregates were likely simple amphiphiles, like soaps, that combined to form cell membrane-like structures. Interestingly, we have shown that using mixtures of these amphiphiles and high-salt high-temperature conditions - similar to conditions in the early oceans - a wide variety of aggregates can emerge, including cell-like membranes. Many of the chemicals or their precursors are found in meteoritic extracts, and therefore are likely found throughout the solar system if not the universe. If these molecules are products of common astrochemical processes, it is possible that life elsewhere could have used similar processes to emerge.

Bio:

Dr. Sarah Maurer earned her PhD in 2010 from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) under David Deamer. Her PhD was completed in collaboration with James Boncella at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Pierre-Alain Monnard at The Center for Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT), University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in Odense, DK.

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Additionally, Dr. Maurer worked as a Postdoctoral researcher with Nita Sahai at the University of Akron, before accepting her current position at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Central Connecticut State University. She was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in Fall 2019.

Dr. Maurer is interested in abiogenesis, from both the origins-of-life and artificial life perspectives. She builds model cells from amphiphiles, and examines possible life-like properties, such as metabolism or growth and division. Her research is funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA.

Her current projects include:

• Changes in populations of model cells when put under environmental pressure. The goal of this work is to examine the ability of cells to survive in the absence of reproduction (prebiotic conditions). This project seeks to model the evolution of cellular containers available on early Earth.

• Artificial photosynthesis under prebiotic conditions generating reduced carbon and a proton gradient using transmembrane electron transport.

• The behavior of biomolecules and their analogues in less polar solvents like decanol. This project is part of an NSF collaboration to better inform our search for life in the solar system and beyond.

Karen Meech

Bio:

Karen Meech is an astronomer who investigates how habitable worlds form, exploring the bigger picture of whether there is life elsewhere. She uses the left-over pieces from our solar system’s formation to understand how habitable planets are made. Her curiosity about life beyond

Earth was inspired as a child camping under the stars in the summer. From this her path led to a career in physics and astronomy, with a Ph.D. in planetary physics from MIT. She is currently an Astronomer and Graduate Chair at the University of Hawaii. She started her astronomical career investigating comets, the icy leftovers from the birth of our solar system. Her work led to an understanding of many of the processes that cause their tails to develop far from our Sun and she was Co-Investigator on three comet missions. Her recent work uses discoveries from the Pan-STARRS survey (Manx comets, and an interstellar object) to test our understanding of how planetary systems are assembled. Her work embraces the power of interdisciplinary science by combining geological field work, geochemistry, astronomical observations, theory and the development of a mission concept to address fundamental questions about how Earth got its water.

Jay Melosh

Bio:

Dr. H. Jay Melosh is a Distinguished Professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science at PurdueUniversity in West Lafayette, IN. He also holds appointments in the departments of Physics and Astronomy and Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering at Purdue. He received an AB degree in Physics from Princeton University in 1969 and a PhD in Physics and Geology from Caltech in 1973. His principal research interests are impact cratering, planetary tectonics, and the physics of earthquakes and landslides. His recent research includes studies of the giant impact origin of the moon, the K/T impact that extinguished the dinosaurs, the ejection of rocks from their parent bodies and the origin and transfer of life between the planets. He was a science team member of NASA’s Deep Impact mission that successfully cratered comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005 and flew by comet Hartley 2 on November 9, 2010. He was also a Co-Investigator of the GRAIL mission that returned detailed data

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on the Moon’s gravity field. Professor Melosh is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, among other honors. He has published approximately 200 technical papers, edited two books and is the author of a major monograph, “Impact Cratering: A Geologic Process” and a text “Planetary Surface Processes” with Cambridge University Press. Professor Melosh is a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, the Geological Society of America, the American Geophysical Union and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was awarded the Barringer Medal of the Meteoritical Society in 1999, the Gilbert prize of the Geological Society of America in 2001 and the Hess Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 2008. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1996-1997 and a Humboldt Fellow at the Bavarian Geological Institute in Bayreuth, Germany, in 2005-2006. Asteroid #8216 was named “Melosh” in his honor. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2003 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011. In 2014 he received the McCoy award of Purdue University, Purdue’s highest science award.

Heath J. Mills

Title:No Trash! Biomanufacturing for In-Flight Resource Recapturing & Repurposing

Abstract:

For biological systems, extended duration space flights will represent the ultimate resource-limited environment. Any terminal waste materials generated will accumulate as lost resources without the possibility for replacement. If a compound or element becomes “non-bioavailable” to the crew, we have immediately created a limited life span for the mission. Therefore, technologies must be developed that recapture all resources, creating a fully

closed loop ecosystem. In addition, we will never be able to bring all of our provisions or plan for all contingencies during the mission, so the ability to repurpose resources toproduce food, pharmaceuticals, and building supplies becomes a requirement. The gap between conceptualizing solutions and putting these technologies into practice is rapidly narrowing. At Rhodium Scientific, we are currently working with multiple research teams that will soon be testing biomanufacturing concepts that will recapture used resources and repurpose them into on-demand products. Genetically modified and modifiable organisms, programmable synthetic biology, and engineered chemical systems can provide some novel answers to these challenges. Additional ideas, technologies, and tests will need to be conceived, engineered and performed to solve the myriad of life-support system challenges to make extended flight possible.

Bio:

Dr. Heath J. Mills has over 18 years’ experience leading international research efforts to characterize and understand life in extreme environments. He graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in Biology and from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in Applied Biology. Dr. Mills has held academic positions at Florida State University, Texas A&M University and the University of Houston Clear Lake where he published nearly 40 publications describing extreme environment microbial ecosystems using advanced molecular techniques. Heath has championed extreme environment research by leading international collaborations, advising governmental agencies, organizing scientific conferences and teaching collegiate-level courses in 15 different countries. In 2015, Dr. Mills founded a successful commercial space startup company that completed numerous domestic and international research projects in low Earth orbit. Recently, he joined Rhodium Scientific where he serves as Chief Scientific Officer, leading initiatives to expand terrestrial and spaceflight research capacities into the advanced commercial biotechnology sector. In space-based research, he has been a Co-Principle Investigator and Principle Investigator on multiple projects funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health and the International Space Station National Laboratory. Currently, Dr. Mills is designing and managing Rhodium Scientific’s portfolio of diverse, quality-controlled enhanced, biological projects for U.S. and international research clientele.

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Harry F. NollerTitle:It Could Happen Here: Evolution of Protein Synthesis (and Life) from an RNA World

Abstract:

Life as we know it depends on the link between genotype (genetic information stored in DNA) and phenotype (biological functions carried out by proteins). The ribosome is responsible for protein synthesis, and therefore links genotype to phenotype. Life could not have arisen from proteins, because they cannot transmit genetic information. RNA, like DNA, can carry genetic information, but unlike DNA can also carry out protein-like enzymatic functions. This is the rationale for the hypothesis that life originated from an RNA World, in which RNA (or something like RNA) embodied both genotype and phenotype. But this in turn raises hard questions: Where did RNA come from? How did RNA replicate? and How (and why!) did protein synthesis evolve? We can now begin to imagine chemically plausible answers to these questions that allow us to connect the dots between the periodic table of the elements and life on Earth during the ~1/2 billion years between cooling of our planet and the emergence of the first organisms.

Bio:

Dr. Harry F. Noller is the Robert Louis Sinsheimer Professor of Molecular Biology, and Director of the Center for Molecular Biology of RNA, at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a native of the East Bay, did his undergraduate education in biochemistry at UC, Berkeley and his Ph.D. in chemistry in the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Oregon. He was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and in the Départment de Biochimie Génétique at the University of Geneva, where he began working on ribosomes in the laboratory of Alfred Tissières. His laboratory at UC Santa Cruz is responsible for the first evidence for the functional role of ribosomal RNA;

sequencing the first ribosomal RNA genes; the secondary structures of the ribosomal RNAs (in collaboration with Carl Woese); mapping the rRNA binding sites for the tRNAs, ribosomal proteins, translation factors and antibiotics; the hybrid-states mechanism for tRNA translocation; and the first crystal structure of the complete ribosome. His main current interests are how the structural dynamics of the ribosome enable its machine-like properties, and the origins of the ribosome from an RNA world.

R.P. Oates

Bio:

Dr. R.P. Oates is currently a Program Manager at Rhodium Scientific, a commercial biotech and space company that facilitates and produces a wide range of translational biotechnology research in microgravity. Rhodium is an official space-flight implementation partner of the International Space Station and consists of a diverse group of mission scientists that adapt the ecosystems of commercial launch vehicles, flight-approved hardware, and spacecraft to expedite the space-flight process for individual researcher needs. Through the development of new life-science programs in microgravity at Rhodium, R.P. hopes to accelerate fundamental discoveries that serve academia, industry, and government.

Before devoting his work full time to Rhodium Scientific, R.P. served as a Deputy Program Manager at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). At DTRA, he supported initiatives to augment nuclear treaty monitoring systems with advanced biotechnologies and develop medical countermeasures for warfighters operating in nuclear environments. R.P. views fundamental life-science research in extreme environments as an essential tool to advance medical countermeasures for long-distance space travel and to improve terrestrial life. Building on his academic background in environmental

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toxicology, medical nanotechnology, and organic chemistry, his current programs in microgravity utilize discovery-based methodology to expand biotechnological toolkits for resource-limited environments.

Megan J. Palmer

Bio:

Dr. Megan J. Palmer is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. She leads a research and practice program on risk governance in emerging technology development, with a focus on how security is conceived and managed as biotechnology becomes increasing accessible. Her current projects focus on assessing strategies for governing dual use research, analyzing the international diffusion of safety norms and practices, and understanding the security implications of alternative technology design decisions.

Previously, Dr. Palmer spent 5 years directing the policy-related research program for the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (Synberc), a multi-university research center in synthetic biology. Within Synberc, she led and contributed to projects in safety and security, property rights, and community organization and governance. She has also held positions as the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at CISAC, as a research scientist at the California Center for Quantitative Bioscience at the University of California, Berkeley (where she was also an affiliate of Lawrence Berkeley National Labs), and as a postdoctoral scholar in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford University (when she first became a CISAC affiliate). Dr. Palmer has created and led many programs aimed at developing and promoting best practices and policies for the responsible development of biotechnology. She founded and serves as Executive Director of the Synthetic Biology

Leadership Excellence Accelerator Program (LEAP), an international fellowship program in biotechnology leadership. She also leads programs in safety and responsible innovation for the international Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition, which last year involved over 5000 students in 300 teams from 42 countries. Dr. Palmer also advises a diversity of organizations on their approach to policy issues in biotechnology, including serving on the board of the synthetic biology program of the Joint Genomics Institute (JGI). Dr. Palmer holds a Ph.D. in Biological Engineering from MIT and a B.Sc.E. in Engineering Chemistry from Queen’s University, Canada

Andrew Pohorille

Bio:

Dr. Andrew Pohorille received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics (specializing in biophysics) from the University of Warsaw. He did his postdoctoral work with Prof. Bernard Pullman at the institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique in Paris. Since 1992 he has been professor of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1996 he joined the staff of NASA Ames Research Center. In 2000 he received NASA’s Award for Astrobiology and in 2002 he was awarded its Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. In 2005 he was named Distinguished Lecturer at the Centre for Mathematical Modeling and the National Centre for Space Research in the U.K, and in 2010 he received the H. Julian Allen award. His main interests have been focused on modeling the origins of life and genetic and metabolic networks, computer simulations of biomolecular systems, and the statistical mechanics of condensed phases. His other research interests are rather eclectic – he has published papers in diverse areas,

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ranging from the structure of comets to the mechanisms of anesthetic action and risky decision-making. He has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications. Recently, he has been working on designing and developing instruments for microbiology experiments in space, as well as new ways to organize scientific information and evaluating biosignatures.

Lynn Rothschild

Bio:

Dr. Lynn Rothschild is passionate about the origin and evolution of life on Earth or elsewhere, while at the same time pioneering the use of synthetic biology to enable space exploration. Her research has focused on how life, particularly microbes, has evolved in the context of the physical environment, both here and potentially elsewhere. More recently Rothschild has brought her creativity to the burgeoning field of synthetic biology, articulating a vision for the future of synthetic biology as an enabling technology for NASA’s missions, including human space exploration and astrobiology. In addition to creating this program, she has represented NASA on two OSTP National Science and Technology Council working groups on synthetic biology. She is a senior scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, as well as Adjunct Professor at Brown University in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry. Since 2011 she has been the faculty advisor of the award-winning Stanford-Brown iGEM team, which has pioneered the use of synthetic biology to accomplish NASA’s missions, focusing on the human settlement of Mars, astrobiology and such innovative projects as BioWires, making a biodegradable UAS (drone) and using fungal mycelia as a building material. She is a fellow of the Linnean Society of London, The California Academy of Sciences and the Explorer’s Club. She was awarded the Isaac Asimov Award from the American Humanist Association, and the Horace Mann Award from Brown, has been a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) fellow three times,

and is PI on the PowerCell payload on the EuCROPIS satellite, launched December 2018, the first dedicated synthetic biology mission.

Gary Ruvkun

Title:What Is True for E. Coli on Earth Will Be True for Life on Proxima Centauri b

Abstract:

Most life detection strategies do not suppose the same form of life on other planets as on Earth: while each primoridal soup of each stellar planetary system may have been filled with the same cosmological chemistry, the eventual self-replicating molecules and organisms on other bodies are rarely posited to be homologous to life on Earth, only analogous. But ample evidence demonstrates cometary and meteoric transfer between planets in the Solar System. And the recent discovery of abundant Neptune-sized exoplanets at small orbital radii, where they are unlikely to have formed, raises the possibility of frequent large planet migration and ejection of other planets from stellar systems. These rogue planets may inoculate multiple planetary systems which they transit as they are bombarded by meteorites. So while astrobiology dogma assumes a primordial soup of chemicals on early Earth that evolved via an RNA world to the current DNA world, these steps could have occurred on another planetary body more than 4 billion years ago and a highly evolved DNA-based life could have seeded the Earth as soon as it was habitable. Supporting a microbial transfer model is the fact that many protein sequences were already evolved to their modern state in the universal ancestor to the tree of life soon after the cooling of the Earth. All known organisms on Earth share a core of about 500 genes, including the most conserved of those genes, the 16S ribosomal gene, some or all of which were inherited from a common ancestor. This

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common ancestor has been hypothesized to be an archaeal-like hyperthermophile 3 to 4 Ga ago whose metabolism exploited oxidation/reduction gradients. Any Martian or other exoplanet biota has been geographically as well as genetically more isolated from the Earth biota, and thus is likely to be more deeply branching in the phylogenetic tree of DNA sequences. Therefore, we expect that using the standard clock for phylogenetic trees, the highly conserved 16S gene detected on Mars, for example, from DNA sequencing, will branch deeply compared to the phylogeny of 16S RNA gene sequences of known Earth life. Thus, the detection of life on other planets and comparison to life on Earth will allow the classification of that life and perhaps even a rooting of the tree of life on Earth. In addition, this phylogenetic analysis is central to the distinction of contamination from Earth from the detection of a bona fide extraterrestrial life. If complex microbial life transferred between planetary systems, the “single-molecule” sensitivity tools of modern genomics can be used to detect life. We call this search SETG, our Search for Extraterrestrial Genomes, a collaborative project with Maria Zuber, Chris Carr, Mike Finney, and Gary Ruvkun.

Bio:

Gary Ruvkun is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ruvkun did his undergraduate work at UC Berkeley and his PhD at Harvard. Dr. Ruvkun’s research has explored three major themes: microRNA genes and other small RNAs, control of longevity and immune surveillance, and detection of life on other planets. Dr. Ruvkun, in collaboration with Victor Ambros, discovered that the first microRNA, lin-4, regulates the translation of a target gene, lin-14, to which it base pairs with functional loops and bulges. Ruvkun identified the second microRNA, let-7, which also regulates translation of its target gene via imperfect base pairing, and showed that the sequence and regulation of the let-7 microRNA is conserved across animal phylogeny including humans. Thousands of miRNAs have subsequently been discovered across eukaryotic phylogeny. Ruvkun has also studied the genes that collaborate with microRNAs and siRNAs and other small RNAs. In addition to revealing fundamental regulatory axes in biology, some of these components may be developed as drug targets to enhance RNAi in mammals. Dr. Ruvkun discovered that an insulin-like signaling pathway controls C. elegans metabolism and longevity. Recent insulin signaling mutant analyses in mouse and human studies have validated the generality of these discoveries to other animals. Dr. Ruvkun’s lab has also used full genome RNAi libraries to explore the complete set of genes that regulate aging. Many of the lifespan-increasing gene inactivations target conserved genes that are also

targeted by microbial antibiotics. Surveillance for these microbial attacks is coupled to detoxification, aging, and immune responses.

For the past 20 years, Dr. Ruvkun, in collaboration with Maria Zuber and Chris Carr from MIT and Mike Finney, has been developing a small nucleic acid sequencing instrument to send to Mars or other bodies to detect and sequence DNA. This instrument, using the exquisitely sensitive tools developed during the recent genomics revolution, will test the theory that nucleic-acid-based life was exchanged between Earth and Mars early in solar system history, and perhaps between planetary systems. Dr. Ruvkun’s awards include the Gairdner International Award (with Victor Ambros), the Lasker Award (with Victor Ambros and David Baulcombe), the Dan David Prize for Aging Research (with Cynthia Kenyon), and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

Steinn Sigurðsson

Title:Lithopanspermia: Sic Itur ad Astra

Abstract:

Large impacts on habitable worlds can launch medium-sized pieces of ejecta into stellar orbit.

The hydrodynamics of the ejection process allows for relatively gentle ejection of mesoscale pieces of crustal material, which can harbour biota. A small fraction of the resultant ejecta can migrate to large apastrons, through planetary perturbations and resonant interactions, on timescales of millions of years.

There is a finite probability of biota-rich ejecta impacting other planets or large moons in the system, potentially transferring biological material between worlds. Some ejecta, including entire moons and planets, may reach stellar escape velocities and wander through interstellar space, with a finite probability

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of entering other planetary systems and transferring biological material between stellar systems. I briefly review some of the relevant processes, timescales and approximate probabilities for transfer of material between stellar systems. I also briefly consider the implications for transfer of life across astronomical distances, and what system configurations may be particularly conducive for panstellar ecologies. Technological boosting of biota transfer may be favoured by similar system configurations to those that are favourable to natural panspermia.

Bio:

Dr. Steinn Sigurðsson is a Professor in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. He received his PhD in physics in 1991 from the California Institute of Technology, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California at Santa Cruz and Cambridge University. He does research in theoretical astrophysics.

Dr. Sigurðsson is a member of CEHW, the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State University; the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos at Penn State; and the Penn State Astrobiology Research Center. He is a Science Editor of the AAS Journals, and the Scientific Director of arXiv at Cornell University.

Kat Volk

Title:Solar System Shake-up: How Planet Migration Rearranged Our System

Abstract:

The population of icy Kuiper belt objects orbiting beyond Neptune in the outer solar system provides strong evidence that our giant planets did not form in their current locations

but instead arrived on their current orbits as a result of planetary migration. The exact timing and nature of this migration is still being investigated, but it is clear that the rearrangement of the giant planets after their formation has dramatically affected the distribution of rocky and icy small bodies throughout the Solar System. During migration, several tens of Earth masses of material were likely gravitationally scattered around the solar system, with most of that mass being ultimately ejected into interstellar space. This large-scale transport of small bodies early in the solar system’s history has important implications for the impact environment of the terrestrial planets as well as the delivery of water and organics throughout the solar system. Additionally, because migration is not likely to be unique to the solar system, planetary rearrangements are probably responsible for ejecting large numbers of planets and small bodies into interstellar space, facilitating the transfer of material between planetary systems.

Bio:

Dr. Kat Volk is an Associate Staff Scientist at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Lab. She received her PhD in Planetary Science in 2013 from the University of Arizona, where her work focused on dynamical studies of small bodies in the giant planet region and the Kuiper belt. She then spent two years as a postdoc at the University of British Columbia working with the Outer Solar System Origins Survey collaboration, which discovered and characterized more than 800 new objects in the outer Solar System. Having moved back to the University of Arizona, she is currently working on research projects that include combining theoretical and observational studies of the outer Solar System to constrain planet migration in the early Solar System; dynamical modeling of Neptune’s mean motion resonances in the current Solar System; and theoretical studies of stability and instability in multi-planet systems to improve our understanding of the large numbers of compact exo-planet systems that have been observed.

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Sara Imari Walker

Title:Searching for the “Laws of Life”: A Guidebook for Reprogramming Planets Abstract:

Currently we do not know what life is, or whether there exist universal laws - in the same sense that the laws of physics and chemistry are universal - that describe life. If we could understand the fundamental principles of life, it would be possible to not only engineer the creation of de novo life in the lab, but also to reprogram entire planets to become living worlds. In this talk I discuss new approaches to understanding what universal principles might underlie living matter and how to generate it, based on studying biochemical networks on Earth from the scale of individual organisms to the planetary scale.

Bio:

Dr. Sara Imari Walker is Assistant Professor in the School of Earth Space Exploration, Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Associate Director of the ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems at Arizona State University. Dr. Walker is trained in theoretical physics, and her work focuses on understanding the origin and nature of life, with implications for the field of astrobiology and our understanding of life in the universe.

Benjamin Weiss Title:Did Martian Meteorites Seed Life on Earth?

Abstract:

The lithopanspermia hypothesis posits that life could be transferred between planets in the solar system by meteorites. The identification of more than 130 known meteorites from Mars beginning in the 1980s demonstrates that geologic materials have been naturally transferred between the planets by meteoroid impacts. However, a key unsolved question is whether life in these rocks could survive the journey. In particular, it has previously been unclear whether the temperature excursions associated with the impact process would have heat-sterilized the ejecta. Here I discuss how petrological and geochronological studies over the last two decades have established that many Martian meteorites were transferred from Earth without being heated above 100C. This supports the panspermia hypothesis that meteorites could transfer life between the planets in our solar system. Because this process was probably most efficient prior to 3.9 billion years when Mars may have had a habitable climate, it is conceivable that the origin of Earth’s life occurred on Mars.

Bio:

Dr. Benjamin Weiss is Professor of Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Chair of the Program in Planetary Sciences within the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. His research interests include the formation, evolution, and history of terrestrial planets and small bodies. He conducts laboratory analyses of planetary samples and in situ spacecraft exploration of solar system bodies to study the formation, evolution, structure, and habitability of planets and small bodies. He is Magnetometry Investigation Lead on the NASA Psyche mission, is a Co-Investigator on the Hayabusa2 and SpaceIL and Europa Clipper missions, and served on the Returned Sample Science Board for the Mars 2020 rover.

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Robert Zubrin

Title:Interstellar Communication Using Microbes: Implications for SETI

Abstract:

Since the dawn of the SETI effort in 1960, it has been generally assumed that the transmission of information across interstellar distances can most practically be accomplished using electromagnetic waves, with the most popular candidate method being radio in the 21-cm wavelength (1.42 GHz) range. Accordingly, a series of searches based on this assumption have been conducted, thus far without any success. In this paper, we will advance a hypothesis that the reason for this failure is because radio is, in fact, a very inefficient means of interstellar communication between species, and that a superior alternative is available. Specifically, we will show that communication between species can be much more effectively accomplished over interstellar distances using microscopic high density data storage packages sized between 1 and 10 microns. Such packages have already been detected. They are, in fact, all around us, and within us, in vast numbers and varieties. Generally known as bacteria, these spaceflight-capable data storage systems are carrying enormous amounts of information, only a small fraction of which has any identifiable purpose. Could interstellar messages be found encoded within the genomes of microbes? Could records of such past transmission be found within the genomes of multicellular organisms? In this paper we shall explore the possibilities, discuss how such transmissions could be efficiently sent, and propose methods by which such a hypothesis might be falsified or verified.

Bio:

Dr. Robert Zubrin is the founder and president of Pioneer Energy. Dr. Zubrin has a B.A. in applied mathematics from the University of Rochester, an M.S in aeronautics and

astronautics and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering, both from the University of Washington.

He has 26 years’ industry experience, more than 200 technical and non-technical publications in various areas of astronautical, aerospace, fossil fuel, and nuclear engineering, and 14 U.S. patents. He is also a best-selling author, with eight books to his credit, including “The Case for Mars; Energy Victory”, which lays out a bold plan for breaking the economic stranglehold that foreign oil has on North America; and Merchants of Despair, which exposes the history of the deeply anti-human ideology that underpins today’s environmental movement.

Zubrin is known internationally as one of the most creative engineers working in industry today, and he and his work have been subject of much favorable press coverage in The Economist, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The London Times, The Washington Post, Fortune magazine, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The Denver Post, Air and Space Smithsonian, Popular Science, Space News, and many other publications. He is president of the Mars Society, a contributing editor of The New Atlantis, and a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy.

After working for seven years at Martin Marietta and Lockheed Martin in the area of space technology and interplanetary missions, Zubrin left to found Pioneer Astronautics in January 1996. As president of that company, he has led more than 60 highly successful R&D projects for NASA, the DOD, and the DOE, achieving an unbroken track record of success in rapidly taking novel technical concepts to hardware demonstration. In the course of that work, he developed several technologies he realized could be useful for terrestrial energy production, and filed for his first patents in that area in 2006, which were subsequently granted. On the basis of this intellectual capital, his track record, and his team, Zubrin was able to find investment capital, successfully spinning off Pioneer Energy as a separate business in 2008. Since that time, he has led Pioneer Energy in its successful development of new technologies, including the Mobile Alkane Gas Separator (MAGS), a field-mobile system for capturing natural gas liquids and useful dry methane out of flare gas, which has now begun mass production and operational deployment.

Prior to his career in aerospace, Zubrin worked in the areas of controlled nuclear fusion research, commercial nuclear power operations and radiation safety, and as a high school science teacher.

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Committee

Charles Alcock

Charles Alcock is the Director of the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), Director of the Harvard College Observatory, and the Donald H. Menzel Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. He is also the Principal Investigator for the Taiwan-America Occultation Survey and previously for the MACHO Project, an international project involving scientists from seven institutions in the US, Australia, Canada, and Britain.

His research interests include large astronomical surveys, the outer solar system, cosmic dark matter, astronomical data mining, and virtual observatory technologies. He earned his PhD in Astronomy from the California Institute of Technology (1977) and a BSc (Hons) in Physics from the Auckland University, New Zealand (1972).

Penelope Boston

Dr. Penelope Boston is Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NASA Ames Research Center). From 2002-2016, she served as Associate Director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute (Carlsbad, NM) and Professor and Chair of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Dept. at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (Socorro, NM). Research areas include geomicrobiology and astrobiology in extreme environments (especially caves and mines, hot and cold deserts, high latitudes and altitudes); geological processes creating caves on other planets and moons; human life support issues in space and planetary environments; and use of robotics and other technologies to assist exploration and advance science in extreme Earth and extraterrestrial environments. She holds a PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Boston received the 2010 Lifetime Science Award from the National Speleological Society, and the Caving Legend Award from the Ft. Stanton Cave Study Project/Bureau of Land Management.

Jamie Drew

Jamie Drew is Chief of Staff and a Program Director for the Breakthrough Initiatives, a suite of scientific and technological space exploration programs searching for life in the Universe. Prior to his current role, Drew worked at the NASA Ames Research Center on nano-spacecraft technologies. At NASA he also served as an International Relations specialist for public-private partnerships in the Office of the Center Director, and Science Manager in the Office of the Chief Scientist. Drew holds a B.A. from Malmö University, Sweden and an M.S. from the Intl. Space University (ISU), France. Drew’s technical research interests lie in mobility systems on and off our planet; his humanities-based research interests focus on questions regarding the future survival of the human species...

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Paul Kalas

Dr. Kalas searches for planetary systems around nearby stars using direct imaging techniques with the world’s most advanced observatories, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Keck Observatory, and the Gemini Telescopes. Though direct images of exoplanets are difficult to obtain and currently quite rare, they provide unique and fundamental information about exoplanetary systems. One of his most well-known discoveries is the planetary system surrounding Fomalhaut, which is a bright star located 25 light years away in the constellation Pisces Australis. The extrasolar planet Fomalhaut b was subsequently named Dagon by the International Astronomical Union. Dr. Kalas also created the first graduate course on research ethics for astronomers, and has authored a popular science ebook called The Oneironauts. He earned his PhD in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (1996), M.S. in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (1992) and a B.S. in Astronomy and Physics from University of Michigan (1989).

S. Pete Worden

Simon Peter “Pete” Worden, (Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret., PhD) is the Chairman of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and Executive Director of the foundation’s Breakthrough Initiatives. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Arizona. Prior to joining the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, Dr. Worden was Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California until his retirement on March 31, 2015. He has held several positions in the United States Air Force and was research professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. He is a recognized expert on space and science issues, both civil and military, and has been a leader in building partnerships between governments and the private sector internationally.

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Notes

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