The Open University

Could life be found in frozen sea spray from moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter? New research finds that life can be detected in a single ice grain containing one bacterial cell or portions of a cell. The results suggest that if life similar to that on Earth exists on these planetary bodies, that this life should be detectable by instruments launching in the fall. The ice-encrusted oceans of some of the moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter are leading candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life. A new lab-based study led by the University of Washington in Seattle and the Freie Universität Berlin shows that individual ice grains ejected from these planetary bodies may contain enough material for instruments headed there in the fall to detect signs of life, if such life exists. "For the first time we have shown that even a tiny fraction of cellular material could be identified by a mass spectrometer onboard a spacecraft," said lead author Fabian Klenner, a UW postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences. "Our results give us more confidence that using upcoming instruments, we will be able to detect lifeforms similar to those on Earth, which we increasingly believe could be present on ocean-bearing moons." The open-access study was published March 22 in Science Advances. Other authors in the international team are from The Open University in the U.K.; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; the University of Colorado, Boulder; and the University of Leipzig. The Cassini mission that ended in 2017 discovered parallel cracks near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Emanating from these cracks are plumes containing gas and ice grains. NASA's Europa Clipper mission, scheduled to launch in October, will carry more instruments to explore in even more detail an icy moon of Jupiter, Europa. To prepare for that mission, researchers are studying what this new generation of instruments might find. It is technically prohibitive to directly simulate grains of ice flying through space at 4 to 6 kilometers per second to hit an observational instrument, as the actual collision speed will be. Instead, the authors used an experimental setup that sends a thin beam of liquid water into a vacuum, where it disintegrates into droplets. They then used a laser beam to excite the droplets and mass spectral analysis to mimic what instruments on the space probe will detect. Newly published results show that instruments slated to go on future missions, like the SUrface Dust Analyzer onboard Europa Clipper, can detect cellular material in one out of hundreds of thousands of ice grains. The study focused on Sphingopyxis alaskensis, a common bacterium in waters off Alaska. While many studies use the bacterium Escherichia coli as a model organism, this single-celled organism is much smaller, lives in cold environments, and can survive with few nutrients. All these things make it a better candidate for potential life on the icy moons of Saturn or Jupiter. "They are extremely small, so they are in theory capable of fitting into ice grains that are emitted from an ocean world like Enceladus or Europa," Klenner said. Results show that the instruments can detect this bacterium, or portions of it, in a single ice grain. Different molecules end up in different ice grains. The new research shows that analyzing single ice grains, where biomaterial may be concentrated, is more successful than averaging across a larger sample containing billions of individual grains. A recent study led by the same researchers showed evidence of phosphate on Enceladus. This planetary body now appears to contain energy, water, phosphate, other salts and carbon-based organic material, making it increasingly likely to support lifeforms similar to those found on Earth. The authors hypothesize that if bacterial cells are encased in a lipid membrane, like those on Earth, then they would also form a skin on the ocean's surface. On Earth, ocean scum is a key part of sea spray that contributes to the smell of the ocean. On an icy moon where the ocean is connected to the surface (e.g., through cracks in the ice shell), the vacuum of outer space would cause this subsurface ocean to boil. Gas bubbles rise through the ocean and burst at the surface, where cellular material gets incorporated into ice grains within the plume. "We here describe a plausible scenario for how bacterial cells can, in theory, be incorporated into icy material that is formed from liquid water on Enceladus or Europa and then gets emitted into space," Klenner said. The SUrface Dust Analyzer onboard Europa Clipper will be higher-powered than instruments on past missions. This and future instruments also will for the first time be able to detect ions with negative charges, making them better suited to detecting fatty acids and lipids. "For me, it is even more exciting to look for lipids, or for fatty acids, than to look for building blocks of DNA, and the reason is because fatty acids appear to be more stable," Klenner said. "With suitable instrumentation, such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer on NASA's Europa Clipper space probe, it might be easier than we thought to find life, or traces of it, on icy moons," said senior author Frank Postberg, a professor of planetary sciences at the Freie Universität Berlin. "If life is present there, of course, and cares to be enclosed in ice grains originating from an environment such as a subsurface water reservoir." The study was funded by the European Research Council, NASA and the German Research Foundation (DFG). Other co-authors are Janine Bönigk, Maryse Napoleoni, Jon Hillier and Nozair Khawaja at the Freie Universität Berlin; Karen Olsson-Francis at The Open University in the U.K.; Morgan Cable and Michael Malaska at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Sascha Kempf at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Bernd Abel at the University of Leipzig.

New research shows the early lunar crust which makes up the surface of the Moon was considerably enriched in water more than 4 billion years ago, counter to previously held understanding. New research from a Western University postdoctoral fellow shows the early lunar crust which makes up the surface of the Moon was considerably enriched in water more than 4 billion years ago, counter to previously held understanding. The discovery is outlined in a study published today in the journal Nature Astronomy. Working with a meteorite she classified as one that came from the Moon while a graduate student at The Open University (U.K.), Tara Hayden identified, for the first time, the mineral apatite (the most common phosphate) in a sample of early lunar crust. The research offers exciting new evidence that the Moon's early crust contained more water than was originally thought, opening new doors into the study of lunar history. "The discovery of apatite in the Moon's early crust for the first time is incredibly exciting -- as we can finally start to piece together this unknown stage of lunar history. We find the Moon's early crust was richer in water than we expected, and its volatile stable isotopes reveal an even more complex history than we knew before," said Hayden, currently working as a cosmochemist with planetary geologist Gordon "Oz" Osinski in Western's department of Earth sciences. "Lunar meteorites are revealing new, exciting parts of the Moon's evolution and expanding our knowledge beyond the samples collected during the Apollo missions. As the new stage of lunar exploration begins, I am eager to see what we will learn from the lunar far side," said Hayden. The Apollo samples were first assumed to be 'volatile-poor' upon their return from the Moon, leading to the wide-known description of the Moon as 'bone dry.' In 2008, Alberto Saal and other researchers discovered the presence of significant amounts of water and other volatiles in glass beads from the Apollo sample collection. This set forth fifteen years of re-analysis of the Apollo samples while newly found lunar meteorites have revealed the Moon had much more water across its surface. "We know most about the history of water on the Moon from the Apollo samples, but those samples are thought to only represent about five per cent of the entire Moon surface," said Hayden. "Until we get more samples back in the upcoming Artemis missions, the only other samples from the surface we have are meteorites." Hayden made the discovery at The Open University during her PhD studies while verifying a rock sample for a collector as a lunar meteorite. Beyond its identification, the sample proved to be holding a key piece of data about water on the Moon. "I was so lucky the meteorite not only came from the Moon but remarkably, featured chemistry so vital to our understanding about lunar water-bearing minerals," said Hayden. This work was focused primarily on the mineral apatite, which contains volatile elements in its mineral structure. Apatite was found in all lunar rock types except glass beads and ferroan anorthosites, the latter representing the Moon's early crust. The Ferroan Anorthosite group is known to be incredibly old (4.5-4.3 billion years old) and is the only rock type known to have formed directly from the Lunar Magma Ocean -- when the Moon was almost entirely molten. The discovery of apatite in this rock type has allowed for the direct examination of this unknown stage in lunar evolution for the first time. "Unravelling the history of water in the earliest-formed lunar crust approximately 4.5 billion years ago is important for improving our understanding of the origin of water in the Solar System. Ancient rock samples from the Moon in the form of lunar meteorites provide an excellent opportunity for undertaking such investigations," said Mahesh Anand, professor of planetary science and exploration at The Open University and Hayden's formal lead supervisor. Future Artemis missions Hayden says the timing of the discovery is perfect as the NASA Artemis missions are preparing for launch and researchers, including her current supervisor, are developing programing and targets for the astronauts. "It has been long believed the lunar surface has been dried out for thousands and even millions of years, but maybe there might be more water available than we thought on the surface of the Moon and we just need to find a way to extract it," said Hayden. Osinski is equally excited for the potential opportunities of this new discovery. Last year, Osinski was selected for the NASA geology team that is developing the surface science plan for the first crewed lunar landing mission in more than 50 years. He will join his colleagues in mission control's science backroom at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston providing support throughout the Artemis III mission. "Tara's discoveries are super exciting and will feed into our sampling strategy for the Artemis III mission where we hope to identify and sample some of the earliest crust on the Moon," said Osinski. Osinski also serves as principal investigator and scientific lead on Canada's first lunar rover, which is being designed and built by Canadensys Aerospace.

Fungal infections are killing thousands of Americans each year, some with a morbidity rate of nearly 80%. To make matters worse, only a handful of antifungal treatments are available, and even those are becoming less effective as fungi become more resistant. However, researchers recently published findings indicating that a novel breakthrough treatment may have been discovered. Researchers with the University of Oklahoma's Natural Products Discovery Group recently published findings that indicate a novel breakthrough treatment for fungal infections. Fungal infections are killing thousands of Americans each year, some with a morbidity rate of nearly 80%. To make matters worse, only a handful of antifungal treatments are available, and even those are becoming less effective as fungi become more resistant. However, University of Oklahoma researchers recently published findings in the Journal of Natural Products indicating that a novel breakthrough treatment may have been discovered. "The molecule we're excited about is called persephacin," said Robert Cichewicz, Ph.D., principal investigator and Regents Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at OU. "This antifungal discovery appears to work on a broad spectrum of infectious fungi, and it is reasonably non-toxic to human cells, which is a huge deal because many current treatments are toxic to the human body." The rise in fungal infections is due, in part, to the successful treatment of other diseases. As people live longer and successfully undergo treatments like chemotherapy and organ transplants, they often live with weakened immune systems. When drugs that treat arthritis and other ailments that also weaken immune systems are added to the mix, a perfect storm is created for potentially deadly fungal infections. Cichewicz, who has been researching fungi for nearly 20 years, leads the Natural Products Discovery Group at OU. This team of researchers discovered this novel molecule and developed a unique method for testing plants for their antifungal properties. "Fungi are found throughout the botanical world, and plants and fungi often work together. Some of these fungi kill competitors or deter insects from eating the plant," Cichewicz said. "We hypothesized that if these plant-dwelling fungi, known as endophytes, could help the plants fight off infections by killing the invading fungi, then these molecules might also be able to protect humans and animals from fungal pathogens. As it turns out, we were right." The team developed a novel way to procure leaf samples using a laser device called the Fast Laser-Enabled Endophyte Trapper, or FLEET. This method helps generate samples in a sterile environment and drastically increases the number of samples that can be acquired. "Using traditional methods, we could process roughly four to six samples per minute," Cichewicz said. "But our FLEET system is capable of aseptically generating between 500-600 tissue specimens in 10 minutes. This allows us to rapidly screen more samples and enhances the opportunity for potential drug discoveries." With assistance from the Office of Technology Commercialization at the University of Oklahoma, Cichewicz was awarded a U.S. patent for using persephacin to control infectious pathogens. "It's taken us a long time to get to this point, but now we're hoping to work with an industry partner to help us develop this treatment," Cichewicz said. "Antifungal resistance keeps evolving, and this could provide a new alternative. That's why this molecule is so exciting."