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1. Did you enter any PLANTS? That is, complex living things that get their energy directly
from the sun?
2. Did you enter any organisms that are TOO SMALL to see with the naked eye (i.e.
microscopic organisms)?
3. Did you enter any organisms that could live in Antarctica, or any place on Earth that is
frozen nearly all year long?
4. Did you enter any organisms that live underwater in ocean environments?
5. Did you enter any parasites, that is, organisms that depend entirely on another organism
for survival?
6. Did you enter any pure carnivores, organisms that eat nothing but meat?
7. Did you include human beings in your list?
There's a lot of diversity in life! Often we forget how many different types of life there are,
because much of it is so different from us, including things too small to see. Check your list
again to see if you entered any NON-LIVING things. Common non-living things that students
often confuse with life include: water, sunlight, wind, fire, smoke, clouds, machines (including
robots), or anything else that moves. Watch for these misconceptions!
4. The complete "blueprint" of all the information needed to rebuild your body is contained:
in specific places scattered throughout your body
in the cells of your brain
in your sperm/egg cells only
in nearly every cell of your body
5. When many cells cooperate, they form ________ and organs.
organelles
tissues
skin
proteins
of the Atlantic Ocean. Here in the total darkness, under incredible pressure, in this boiling, toxic,
deadly brew, they found life. Not just a little bit of life, but an entire rich and beautiful
ecosystem. Take a few moments to watch Ballard talk about that day of discovery; it was the day
that biology turned upside down, and all our biology textbooks had to be scheduled for a rewrite.
Life is a lot tougher than we thought. Now we know that there are many forms of life that thrive
in environments that we think of as extreme salty, acid or alkaline, very hot or cold,
poisonous, high or low pressure, and even radioactive. They have classifying names based on
what environment they love, such as halophiles (salt-lovers), thermophiles (heat-lovers),
acidophiles (acid-lovers) and so on. Most of them are single-celled organisms, but some are
complex organisms like fish or worms. Weve discovered creatures that can survive having their
cells nucleus destroyed by radiation, and are somehow able to reassemble their DNA from
shreds and scraps. Weve discovered that certain insects can survive the vacuum of outer space
for days. Weve had to broaden our thinking, and our definition of life, to include the amazing
diversity of the extremophiles.
3. Corliss and Ballard discovered lifeforms at the bottom of the Atlantic near volcanic vents
called:
hot springs
lava tubes
gushers
black smokers
4. An organism that loves salty environments would be called a halophile.
True
False
5. Thomas Brock discovered extremophile bacteria in the hot springs at:
Yellowstone
Salt Lake
Hot Springs, Georgia
Reykjavik, Iceland
Put on your fur parka and head to the frozen Arctic wasteland, or south to the equally frigid
Antarctic ice sheet, and you might think youd be alone. But in the pressurized ice here are tiny
cracks filled with salt water, and you guessed it living things. Psychrophiles or cryophiles
are the names given to cold-loving organisms, many having cells filled with antifreeze
solutions similar to what you might put in your cars radiator. Youll even find cryophilic fish
swimming underneath the permanently frozen sea ice.
You might want to warm up now with a trip to a nice hot spring. Yellowstone has plenty, at
temperatures upwards of 88C (190F). That might give you and me third-degree burns, but
thermophiles are thriving in this environment, feeding off ammonia and sulfur. If you want the
REALLY hot springs, you might take a submarine journey down to the pitch-dark bottom of the
ocean, where black smokers vent sulfur-rich liquids at over 150C (300F). Not only will you
find Archaea living in these vents, but huge, thriving ecosystems with tubeworms and crab-like
creatures are built around them. Even without sunlight, life is able to thrive using a process
called chemosynthesis (like photosynthesis, but based on chemical energy rather than sunlight).
You and I use chemosynthesis, too we don't need sunlight directly but we depend
absolutely on photosynthesis in plants for all our food. We never imagined that a whole ecology
could be built without a single ray of sunlight.
Now if you're feeling the need to dry off, you could head out to the barren salt flats around Salt
Lake City or San Francisco Bay. Here, the water at lake's edge is so salty that it is crystallizing.
But what are all those amazing colors? Sure enough, we're looking at life again. Halophiles, saltloving organisms, still need water to live, but can tolerate large amounts of salt mixed in.
Is there anywhere we can travel where we DON'T find life? Well, since this is about
ASTRObiology, I guess we could put on a space suit and take a quick trip into outer space! Let's
look at three places of interest in our own solar system: Titan, Europa, and Mars.
Titan is the largest moon orbiting Saturn. It is very, very cold about -178C (-288F) but it
actually has lakes and oceans on its surface. These are made of liquid methane, not water. Titan
also has an atmosphere, mainly nitrogen and methane gas. Now that we know there are methaneloving extremophiles, it opens the possibility that we could someday find life on Titan. In fact,
some recent discoveries from NASA's Cassini probe are causing excitement about this
mysterious moon.
Europa is not the largest of Jupiter's moons that honor belongs to Ganymede but it may be
the most interesting, at least to astrobiologists. One reason is that recent probes have shown
strong evidence of vast oceans of liquid water just underneath the icy surface of this moon. Yes,
it's cold, and yes, it's dark. But that hasn't stopped life at the bottom of the Atlantic. Could we
find life deep within Europa's oceans? Time will tell
Mars has certainly caused a lot of excitement in recent years. Its relatively close orbit has
allowed us to send robotic "rovers" to the surface, enabling scientists to look much more closely
for signs of life. So far, there's no convincing evidence. BUT we did find confirmation of water
ice near the Martian surface, and the soil of Mars is fertile and nutrient-rich. The surface features
of Mars strongly suggest that this planet may have once had oceans, lakes and rivers. Was there
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life on Mars at that distant time? Could it even be there today, lurking under the surface? We
don't know, but rest assured we'll be sending more robots, and maybe even people, to this
tantalizingly close planet.
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3. Organisms that produce methane-rich environments (found in swamps and cow intestines!) are
called:
methoglans
methanocides
methanophiles
methanogens
4. Without light, organisms can't perform photosynthesis, so living communities cannot form.
True
False
5. All extremophiles are single-celled organisms.
True
False
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was developed using this enzyme to copy DNA in a test tube. It is now used in DNA
fingerprinting for paternity and forensics, genetic medicine, and thousands of other uses.
Pioneer genetics researcher Craig Venter, along with many other research teams, are trying to
find ways to construct new lifeforms that could, for example, turn excess carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere into fuels, or clean up oil spills, or selectively attack cancer cells. Laboratory genesplicing techniques were able to build short sections of DNA, but not the tremendously long
sequences needed by a "real" organism. Again, extremophiles came to the rescue! An
extremophile bacterium called Deinococcus radiodurans was found to be able to reconstruct its
DNA after having it shredded into thousands of fragments. Venter was able to harness this
amazing ability and splice together thousands of smaller DNA fragments, producing the first true
artificial lifeform." Gaining control over these basic mechanisms of life, even though it has
risks and ethical issues, could open up vast new possibilities in energy and medicine.
Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? More and more scientists are convinced that well soon
find the answer to be YES. It's not likely to be "little green men" from Mars, but we may well
find single-celled lifeforms somewhere other than Earth. Part of the reason is that our discovery
of extremophiles broadens the range of conditions where we know life can exist. We now know
that life can exist without oxygen, without sunlight, and perhaps even without liquid water. Even
complex, multicellular organisms have been found to be amazingly hardy. During a 2007 NASA
mission, tiny animals called Tardigrades, or water bears, were found to be able to survive
after ten days in the vacuum of outer space. They can also survive being dried out for decades,
cooked past boiling, zapped by normally lethal radiation, or squeezed at six thousand times air
pressure. Now thats tough!
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2. The study of extremophiles led to a whole new "Domain" being added to the base of the tree
of life. This domain is called:
Extrema
Bacteria
Archaea
Animalia
3. What quality made Deinococcus radiodurans so interesting to artificial life research?
it produced TAQ polymerase
it could resist extreme heat
it could reassemble its own DNA from scraps
it glowed under UV light
4. TAQ polymerase from hot springs bacteria is used in the ___ process for DNA analysis and
fingerprinting.
TAQ
MMR
PCR
NMR
5. Tardigrades, shown to be able to survive in outer space, are single-celled creatures.
True
False
Unit 1: Resources
NASA - What is Life?
Q&A Website from NASA
Exploratorium: Origins
Informational website from NSF
Extreme Ecosystems
Informational Website from NASA
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NASA Astro-Venture
Grades 5-8. Interactive, multimedia Web environment where students role-play NASA
occupations, this Astro-Venture is a Biology Training Module in which students change the
biological features of Earth and observe the effects. Students will also explore how these features
work together to help make a planet habitable to humans.
Astrobiology in Your Classroom (NASA)
Grades 5-8. This Educator Guide is full of hands on activities that lay the conceptual groundwork
for understanding questions fundamental to the field of astrobiology. These activities enable
students to examine the nature of life, what it requires, its limits, and where it might be found.
Created by Cornell University Department of Astrobiology.
TERC Astrobiology Curriculum
Grades 6-12. This is a middle and high school curriculum developed by TERC that teachers must
pay to purchase. However, free sample activities on topics such as the history of life on Earth
and habitability are available.