“We are living in an extraordinary moment in history,” said Didier Queloz, who runs ETH Zurich’s Center for the Origin and Distribution of Life and the Leverhulme Center for Life in the Universe in Cambridge. Keloz, still a doctoral student, was the first to discover an exoplanet, a planet orbiting a solar-type star outside Earth’s solar system. A discovery for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

In one generation, scientists have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets and estimated the potential existence of trillions more in the Milky Way galaxy alone. Each discovery raises more questions than answers about how and why life arose on Earth and whether it exists elsewhere in the universe. Technological advances such as the James Webb Space Telescope and interplanetary missions to Mars are accelerating access to vast new observations and data, so understanding the origin of life in the universe will require the convergence of an interdisciplinary network.

ETH Zurich, Cambridge, Harvard and Chicago founded the “Origins Federation”

Joining forces with chemist and Nobel laureate friend Jack Shostak and astronomer Dimitar Sasselov, Didier Keloz has created a new “federation of origin » At the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2023 Annual Meeting. While an imaginary interstellar federation may immediately come to mind, this international alliance brings together the expertise of researchers working on the origins and initiatives of life centers at ETH Zurich, Cambridge University, Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

Together, the scientists will investigate the chemical and physical processes of living organisms and the environmental conditions suitable for supporting life on other planets. “The Origins Federation,” Keloz commented, “is built on a longstanding peer-to-peer relationship that has been strengthened through collaboration on a recently completed project with the Simons Foundation.”

What can humanity learn from extraterrestrial biosignatures?

Such collaborations support the work of researchers like Emily Mitchell, Professor of Zoology. Working with Keloz at the Leverhulme Center for the Study of Life in the Universe in Cambridge, Mitchell is an ecological time traveler. She uses field laser scanning and statistical mathematical ecology on fossils of 580-million-year-old deep-sea organisms to identify driving factors affecting macroevolutionary life patterns on Earth. Speaking at ETH Zurich’s Origins of Life session at AAAS, Mitchell took the participants 4 billion years ago, when Earth’s early oxygen-deprived and methane-rich atmosphere showed the first signs of microbial life. She talked about how life survives and then evolves in extreme conditions and offers potential astrobiological insights into the origins of life elsewhere in the universe.

“As we begin to explore other planets with Mars missions,” Mitchell says, “biosignatures can reveal whether the origin of life itself and its evolution on Earth was just a coincidence or just part of the fundamental nature of the universe in all its biological and ecological complexity.”

Filling the field with synthetic cells

While complex biological cells are not yet fully understood, synthetic cells allow biochemists like Kate Adamala of the University of Minnesota Protobiology Laboratory to break down complex systems into simpler parts. Pieces that allow scientists to understand the fundamental principles of potential life and evolution not only on Earth but on other planets in the solar system.

Adamala began her quest to build a life from scratch as a graduate student at Harvard, working with Nobel laureate Jack Shostak. She tries to apply engineering principles to biology to create simple, cell-like bioreactors that resemble the earliest forms of life. During the AAAS, Adamala explained how synthetic cells allow scientists to study past, present, and future life in the universe. Unlike biological cells, synthetic cells can be digitized and delivered over long distances, for example to create drugs or vaccines on demand – an “astropharmacy” that could potentially support life aboard a spacecraft or even a future Mars colony. So far, synthetic cells have offered practical applications to humanity in terms of sustainable energy systems, increased productivity, and biomedical therapy.