TROY, N.Y. -- A NASA grant of nearly $4 million has created a center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for the study of the origin of life. Two other universities in New York's Capital Region will participate in the newly funded research partnership.
Totaling $949,490 per year for four years, the grant has established the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT) for the Study of the Origins of Life, said Rensselaer's James Ferris, professor of chemistry, who will direct the new program.
"The center will carry out interdisciplinary investigation of the origin and early evolution of life, starting with stardust and the organic molecules formed in interstellar space, all the way to the reactions of the organics that led to the formation of life on Earth," Ferris said.
For example, research at the new center will explore the two popular but differing hypotheses concerning the origin of organic compounds that formed the building blocks of life. One hypothesis proposes that organic compounds were delivered to Earth after having been formed in interstellar clouds and modified in the nebula that became our sun and our solar system.
An alternative view claims that the building blocks of life on Earth were formed here by the action of various energy sources on the atmosphere that emerged from volcanic emissions early in Earth's evolution.
"The interdisciplinary team we have to tackle these questions is truly outstanding," said Ferris.
Ferris, an authority on how life may have had its beginnings in early chemical processes, has produced RNA polymers in the laboratory under conditions that may have existed on primordial Earth. He is the past president of the International Society for the Study of the Origins of Life (ISSOL) and is the editor of the journal Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere. In 1996, Ferris was awarded the Oparin Medal from the ISSOL for "the best sustained scientific research program in the origin of life."
The team of principal investigators includes John Delano, professor and chair of the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at the State University of New York at Albany; Michael Gaffey, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Rensselaer; Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer, professor and chair of biology at Rensselaer; Wayne Roberge, professor of physics at Rensselaer; and Douglas Whittet, professor of physics at Rensselaer. William Hagan, professor of chemistry at the College of St. Rose in Albany, is an associated scientist within the new center.
Whittet and Roberge are known for their research on the formation and reactions of interstellar organic compounds. Whittet uses spectroscopy to determine the structures of interstellar organics. Roberge models the chemical reactions that took place during cataclysmic events that formed the solar system.
Gaffey is an internationally regarded expert on asteroids, which may have produced or modified the organic building blocks of life and helped carry them to Earth.
Nierzwicki-Bauer is an authority on bacterial life that thrives in extreme conditions such as deep beneath the surface of Earth. "That work is very important when we examine how life may have begun in the seemingly hostile conditions of the early Earth or on other planets," said Ferris.
Delano is a geochemist who investigates asteroid and meteorite impacts. He is also experienced in developing school and community outreach programs, an essential part of the work of the new center, said Ferris.
Hagan examines energy storage in small organic molecules and the effect of light on molecular transformations.
Work at the center will include research, graduate and undergraduate education, interaction with science teachers in Capital Region schools, and community outreach that could include the use of public radio, public television, and the Internet.
Since the early '90s, NASA has created more than seven NSCORTs throughout the country in areas of research such as plant biology, radiation health, bioregenerative life, and integrated physiology. A second NSCORT on the origin of life already exists on the West Coast in a cooperative effort between scientists at the University of California at San Diego, the Salk Institute, and the Scripps Research Foundation. That center focuses more on how living organisms developed from the organic building blocks.