2023 – 2024

The EAI ACADEMY is an international educational program organized and disseminated by the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA, Madrid, with the support of the European Astrobiology Institute (EAI). It provides a framework to meet online with the international astrobiology community and gain interdisciplinary knowledge through a series of seminars given by experts in these fields. The Academy’s audience connects from over 32 countries and all continents, with an average participation of 120 attendees per seminar. Previous editions are accessible through the CAB youtube channel(2021-2022, 2022-2023).

The EAI Academy program for the 2023-2024 academic year will start this October 4. The seminars are offered free of charge and will be streamed online via zoom every two weeks on Wednesdays from 15:00 to 16:00 CET (Madrid time). The talks will be given by world-renowned experts, who will answer questions posed by the audience after their presentation. All seminars will be recorded for future availability on the CAB youtube channel.

At the end of the academic year, CAB awards a certificate of participation to those who attend a minimum of 10 seminars. In order for us to track attendance, you will need to enter your name and affiliation in the seminar chat when you enter the room (Zoom).

Registration is now closed.

LIST OF SPEAKERS AND TOPICS

Dr. Armando Azua Bustos
Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), INTA-CSIC, Madrid
Spain

The evolutionary tree of life

October 4th, 2023

On the Current limits for detecting evidences of life on Mars

For almost 15 years I have roamed the Atacama Desert, the driest and oldest desert on Earth to characterize how life is able to survive in one of the most extreme environments on Earth.

Recently we discovered a new site in the Coastal Range of this desert, Red Stone, finding that this site was a strikingly similar analog model of a river delta on Mars, such as Jezero Crater, which is being currently explored by the Perseverance Rover.

In addition, this site allowed us to test some of the testbed instruments that are soon to be sent to Mars, finding that most of them are barely able to detect any biosignatures in Red Stone samples.

Along the discovery that this site is inhabited by a number of bacteria difficult to identify even when having its diagnostic DNA sequences, the collection of findings tell us on the pertinence of what we consider to be one of the best analog model of Mars on Earth.

Link to the video

Dr. Nora Noffke
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia
USA

Traces of early life on Earth

November 15th, 2023

Early Life on Earth Preserved in the Clastic Rock Record

“Microbialites belong to the oldest fossils of Earth’s earliest life during the Archean time. One group of these microbialites are the “microbially induced sedimentary structures (MISS).” These structures of centimeter to meter sizes develop by benthic microbial mats interacting with waves and currents in clastic (sandy) sediments. The MISS are more common than stromatolites, and we know them from the Archean to today, with the oldest examples deriving from the 3.48 Ga Dresser Formation, Pilbara, Western Australia. This seminar will introduce to the morphologies and distribution of MISS in environments and through time, their formation and preservation, and their role in Mars exploration.

Link to the video

Dr. Guillermo Muñoz Caro
Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), INTA-CSIC, Madrid
Spain

Prebiotic chemistry and the carbon cycle

November 29th, 2023

From C to COMs (where C = atomic carbon and COMs = Complex Organic Molecules)

Complex organic molecules (COMs) are defined as species with at least one C atom
and six or more atoms in total. More than 70 COMs were detected in the gas toward various
interstellar and circumstellar regions. In addition to methanol, CH3OH, recent observations
with the JWST suggest that other COMs are also present in the ice covering tiny dust grains toward
protostars. Such ice mantles are made of H2O, CO, CO2, CH3OH, CH4, NH3, OCS and other species
that remain unidentified.
The existence of COMs challenges the scheme of gas-phase reactions and suggests a
formation in the ice. Some COMs can be synthesized by surface reactions on dust, other COMs seem
to be indicative of energetic processing in the ice mediated by photons and cosmic rays.
In our laboratory, we mimic the formation of COMs in the ice driven by UV, X-rays and cosmic rays.
A wealth of COMs is produced in our experimental simulations of ice processing, among those of
astrobiological interest are amino acids, carboxylic acids and N-heterocycles. The combination of
astronomical observations, laboratory simulations, and modeling is essential to understand the dust
processes leading to COMs formation in space.

Link to the video

Dr. Marco Moracci
Department of Biology, University of Naples, Naples
Italy

The evolutionary tree of life

December 13th, 2023

Life in extreme conditions: evolution on Earth and elsewhere?

The search for traces of life in the universe has not, at the moment, produced results; Earth is the only natural laboratory for studying life, understanding its origin and the mechanisms of evolution and adaptation. The primordial terrestrial environment, populated only by unicellular life, was characterized by high temperatures due to the frequent bombardments of meteorites and comets and intense volcanic activity. Therefore, terrestrial hydrothermal environments, characterized by temperature T>70°C and pH extremes, are recognized as analogues of extraterrestrial environments, such as the bottom of the oceans of Europa and Enceladus. The aim of this talk is to describe the organisms populating such extreme environment and named extremophiles in an anthropocentric vision. I will summarize the molecular mechanisms explaining why extremophiles jst not withstand extreme conditions, but require them to grow and I will show why extremophiles are interesting for the study of the origin of life, the searching for life in the Space, and for applications beneficial to humans. Recent and forthcoming events dedicated to the study of life in extreme conditions will be also described.

Link to the Video

Dr. Helmut Lammer
Space Research Institute (IWF), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz
Austria

Evolution of planetary environments

January 10th, 2024

Early Phase of habitable planets

The talk focuses on the evolution of stellar and geophysical conditions that allow complex multi-cellular life forms to originate on terrestrial planets with atmospheres that are dominated by N2/O2. It is shown that the earliest accretion processes set the initial parameter stages for terrestrial planets to end up as Earth-like Habitats. The most relevant factors and time scales such as the accretion time of terrestrial planets and the lifetime of the protoplanetary disk will be discussed. Competition between these time scales will determine if an accreting terrestrial planet may end up inside the habitable zone as a sub-Neptune with a primordial atmosphere or not. Other relevant factors like the availability of the initial amount of heat-producing radioactive elements such as 40K, 238U, and 232Th on early planets and their role in shaping habitable environments, including a planet thermal evolution and hence the right tectonic regime that is necessary for life as we know it will also be addressed. Since these elements can be lost during planet formation, one can expect that many terrestrial planets inside the habitable zone will have internal heat budgets and tectonic regimes that are different than those of Earth. Finally, a newly derived formula that can be used for the estimation of the number of potential Earth-like Habitats in the Milky Way that can be constrained by the detection of main atmospheric species, obtained from future space and large ground-based telescopes, will also be discussed.

Link to the video

Dr. Manuel Scherf
Space Research Institute (IWF), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz
Austria

Evolution of planetary environments

January 24th, 2024

The role of host star on the evolution of habitable Exoplanets

The existence of an Earth-like Habitat, that is, a rocky exoplanet within the Habitable Zone of Complex Life that hosts an Earth-like N2-O2-dominated atmosphere with minor amounts of CO2, depends on a certain set of known (and, potentially, unknown) astrophysical and geophysical requirements that must be met to allow for its evolution and environmental stability. One crucial factor for the emergence and evolution of Earth-like atmospheres is a planet's host star. Its radiation and plasma environment may affect the stability of an Earth-like atmosphere to such an extent that it can even render its stable existence unlikely around highly active stars since these atmospheres are highly susceptible to escaping into space. Other factors that affect the prevalence of Earth-like Habitats in the Galaxy include a star’s metallicity and its location within the galactic disk (famously known as the Galactic Habitable Zone). The talk will therefore discuss the important role of a planet’s host star in the evolution of Earth-like Habitats with a specific focus on atmospheric stability and its location within the galactic disk. Related to this, we will also discuss which kind of stars may present the most promising targets for finding planets with Earth-like atmospheres and address some additional problems that may arise around M dwarfs.

Link to the video

Dr. Silvana Pinna
Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS), Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg
France

Prebiotic chemistry and the carbon cycle

February 7th, 2024

Exploring the Origins of Life in the ocean

Numerous approaches exist for investigating the origins of life, with some asserting that the ocean is the most favourable environment. This talk aims to present the field and adopts a planetary viewpoint to highlight the significant role the ocean (and specific areas therein) may have played in facilitating conditions suitable for the emergence of life as we know it. The knowledge gained from studying life's origins in Earth's oceans holds profound implications for exploring potential life on ocean worlds.

Link to the video

Dr. Nadia Balucani
Dipartimento di Chimica, Biologia e Biotecnologie, Universita' degli Studi di Perugia, Perguia
Italy

Prebiotic chemistry and the carbon cycle

February 21st, 2024

Prebiotic chemistry in space: how, where and when

Life relies on reduced compounds of carbon. The percentage of carbon on Earth is quite small compared to the average percentage of carbon in our Galaxy, and most of it is trapped in carbonate rocks and carbon oxides.

What has the evolution of carbon on Earth been, and why is Earth so depleted in carbon? How did life originate in an oxidizing environment like that of primordial Earth? Reduced organic compounds with some prebiotic potential appear to be abundant in many small bodies of the Solar System (asteroids, comets, meteorites, and even interplanetary dust). How were these organic compounds formed? Could these compounds have triggered life on Earth?

In this seminar I will present the point of view of a chemist, showing you the results of my research which ranges from the chemistry of the interstellar medium to the chemistry of planetary atmospheres and cometary comae.

Link to the video

Dr. Frances Westall
Centre de biophysique moléculaire (CBM), CNRS, Orleans
France

Traces of early life on Earth

March 6th, 2024

Why early life is so important to the search for extraterrestrial life

There are many missions (and future missions) searching for extraterrestrial life in the Solar System and on exoplanets. The stakes are high with enormous consequences ensuing bona fide detections – for the researchers involved, for the decision makers who fund research and/or space missions, as well as for the general public. While exoplanet research is particularly geared to traces of evolved life, ranging from organisms having developed some form of photosynthesis to SETI and technosignatures, Solar System studies are more “modest” and realistic in the sense that we know we are looking for life resembling (but not identical to) terrestrial anaerobic microorganisms.

Evolved life on Earth (from oxygenic phototrophs onward) co-evolved with a geological and environmentally changing world that has no counterparts in the Solar System (unless some form of geological evolution took place on Venus). The early Earth, on the other hand, was relatively simple geologically speaking: mostly ocean planet, paucity of emergent landmasses, mostly CO2 atmosphere, environment dominated by volcanism and hydrothermal activity etc. When life emerged on Earth more than 4 billion years ago (Ga), and for about a billion years, it was totally controlled by geological processes. The appearance of anoxygenic photosynthesis and the gradual instauration of global plate tectonics leading to the formation of continental landmasses paved the way for the greater influence of life on the environment and geological processes.

However, apart from possibly Venus, plate tectonics did not occur on other bodies in the Solar System and technologies are not yet at a stage to detect it on exoplanets. What was life like on the very early Earth before the emergence of photosynthesis?
I will show our research of nearly 30 years into some of the oldest traces of life, concentrating specifically on chemotrophs, organisms that obtain their energy from oxidation of inorganic substances (chemoautolithotrophs) or from oxidation of pre-existing organic matter (chemoorganotrophs), as examples of the kinds of primitive life forms that might inhabit or have inhabited planets or icy satellites in the Solar System. Chemolithoautotrophs are believed to have been the first forms of life on Earth and microorganisms using similar kinds of metabolisms are likely to be the most common in the Universe – they do not leave detectable atmospheric traces.

In particular, I will underline the challenges of studying their fossilised remains to prove both biogenicity and syngenicity, even here on Earth where we have access to unlimited and highly sophisticated equipment. As a fore taste, our recent PhD student Laura Clodoré has just published a paper detailing the painstaking steps necessary for such studies: Clodoré, L. et al., 2024. Multi-Technique Characterization of 3.45 Ga Microfossils on Earth: A Key Approach to Detect Possible Traces of Life in Returned Samples from Mars. Astrobiology 24. Published Online: 20 Feb 2024, https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2023.0089.

Link to the Video

Dr. Lena Noack
Planetary Geodynamics, Institute of Geological Sciences, Freie Universität, Berlin
Germany

Evolution of planetary environments

April 3rd, 2024

From the interior to the surface

The still rather young field of exoplanetary research - increasing dramatically over the past three decades with by now more than 5500 exoplanets discovered - also strongly influenced the way how we think about the conncection between the interior of a planet and its surface, and especially its habitability potential. Within the solar system, while most information about interior properties and evolution stems from our own Earth, we do have access to limited information on the interior of several of our neighbour bodies in the inner and outer solar system (for example due to seismic measurements on the Moon and Mars, orbital characteristics, measurement of tidal deformations, observations of jets in case of Enceladus). For exoplanets, on the other hand, our observations are limited to very basic characteristical properties (mass, radius, age, orbit) and observations of the atmosphere/surface. A large effort of the community therefore developed in the direction to gain a deeper understanding of feedback cycles between core, mantle, lithosphere/crust, surface and atmosphere (and space). Especially for our goal to detect and characterize rocky planets that might truely be habitable, we need to consider the planet as a whole.

Link to the video

Dr. Marta Ruiz Bermejo
Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), INTA-CSIC, Madrid
Spain

Prebiotic chemistry and the carbon cycle

April 17th, 2024

HCN chemistry: Feedback between Prebiotic Chemistry and Materials Science

In this talk, a general overview of the hydrogen cyanide (HCN) chemistry will be showed, from the first HCN oligomerization observed by Proust in 1806 to the new proposed insights in prebiotic chemistry and the most recent advances in materials science, and the feedback between both fields.

The hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is a ubiquitous molecule in the Universe. It has been detected in a wide range of environments with astrobiological interest, such as interstellar clouds, star-forming regions, planetary nebulae, interplanetary dust, comets, meteorites and atmospheres of satellites and planets such as Titan and Pluto and very recently in the plumes of Enceladus. In a terrestrial context, HCN can be identified in volcanic eruptions and hydrothermal vents and may have been relatively abundant in the atmosphere of the early Earth.

Currently, HCN is considered a key compound in novel proposals regarding scenarios and hypotheses related to the first stages of increasing molecular complexity that led to the rise of life. It has been suggested that the HCN has significant implications for the prebiotic generation of several important bioorganics and related and intermediate compounds, such as amino acids, canonical and non-canonical nucleobases, and other N-heterocycles, as well as carboxylic acids and sugar derivatives.

On the other hand, the HCN can spontaneously polymerize in the presence of bases, such as NH3 or Et3N, and free radicals from ionizing radiation, and they occur over a wide range of conditions. This singular polymeric system can also be produced from its soluble salts (NaCN or KCN), its trimer and tetramer, namely, aminomalononitrile and diaminomaleonitrile, respectively, or from its hydrolysis products, such as formamide. Furthermore, it has been suggested that HCN polymers may be the major components of the dark matter present on the surface of meteorites and comets. In addition, beyond the interest in HCN polymers in the fields of astrochemistry, prebiotic chemistry and astrobiology, these fascinating substances are inspiring new materials and present interesting properties that can lead to promising applications.

Link to video

Dr. Juan Pérez-Mercader
Senior Research Fellow, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. USA & Profesor de Investigación in Spain's National Research Council (CSIC)
Spain

The evolutionary tree of life

April 24th, 2024

Making (generalized) life in a test tube: experiments and implications

Living systems on Earth are open complex chemical systems. Using biochemistry, they all (i) process information, (ii) metabolize, (iii) self-reproduce and (iv) evolve. Starting with an aqueous homogeneous blend of biochemistry-free chemicals, and using biochemistry-free Polymerization Induced Self-Assembly (PISA), we demonstrate the autonomous, chemistry-controlled 1-pot synthesis and boot-up of micron-scale vesicles (“protocells”) exhibiting all the above properties. Driven by carbon chemistry and the dynamics of a growing vesicle, the time evolution of these protocells parallels the lifecycle of natural extant biology. They autonomously boot-up, display periodic growth and collapse during several consecutive cycles, self-reproduce (driven by molecular degradation in their lumen), provide heritable variation and show chemotaxis. They also show a “struggle for life” and “competitive exclusion”, thus offering a steppingstone towards Darwinian evolution. These results are a first laboratory realization of synthetic, minimal, autonomous, non-biochemical life, or “Bernal’s generalized life”. They offer insights into the laboratory creation of artificial life, of new functional materials and of multiple pathways for the prebiotic formation and evolution of precursor protocells en route to the first biochemical living systems on Earth. In the realms of Astrobiology and Exoplanets these results greatly expand our horizons for the potential presence of life in the Universe.

Link to Video

Dr. Laura Sanchez
Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), INTA-CSIC, Madrid
Spain

Traces of early life on Earth

May 8th, 2024

Lipid biomarkers, those fatty guys key for the search of (early and extraterrestrial) life

Lipids are structural components of cell membranes in all type of organisms on Earth. They can represent up to 7% of the cell dry weight in microorganisms, and are involved in a number of functions in the cell (energy storage, transport of nutrients into the cell, stabilization of proteins, or maintenance of the protonmotive force), where the barrier function is central. Because of their ubiquity on life (as we know it) and their relative resistance to degradation compared to nucleic acids or proteins, lipids are considered unique biomarkers for life detection on Earth. They display effective membrane-forming properties even under geochemically hostile conditions, promising lipids a universal biomarker character suitable for life detection beyond Earth, where a putative biological membrane would also be required to separate life from the outside environment. Cell membrane-derived compounds retain diagnostic information about their origin and biosynthetic pathway in their recalcitrant hydrocarbon skeletons for billions of years, which is crucial in the field of astrobiology given the time span that the geological ages of planetary bodies encompass. In addition, lipid configurations adapt to the changing environment modifying their structural composition (e.g. introducing doble bonds, methyl branches, or rigidifying compounds) to regulate membrane fluidity in response to external factors (e.g. temperature, pH, pressure, etc). Thus, the molecular distribution and structural configuration of lipids allow us to reconstruct not only the paleobiology, but also the environmental and depositional conditions. In my talk, I will expose the strengths of lipid biomarkers as an astrobiological and paleobiological reconstruction tool, trying to make a journey from the fundamental search for life to the particular case of these geostable molecular fossils. I will explain how we can learn about detecting life in extreme environments with analogy (mineralogical, chemical, geomorphological or environmental) to Mars and other planetary bodies in the Solar System (Icy Moons), to help define what, how and where search for extraterrestrial life.
Link to Video

Dr. Ludmila Carone
Space Research Institute (IWF), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz
Austria

Evolution of planetary environments

May 29th, 2024

How 3D climate circulation makes and breaks habitability

Understanding habitability in the Solar System and rocky exoplanets is a complex interdisciplinary endeavour. One piece to complete this puzzle is the 3D climate and atmosphere composition on such planets. 3D climates and primordial atmosphere atmosphere constituents like H2 may help to solve the Faint Young Sun problem im the Solar System. For rocky planets that orbit close to active M dwarf stars, the state of their climates is important to understand if such planets can be habitable and also to maximize the chances to characterize such atmospheres.
Link to video

Fulvio Franchi
Università degli Studi di Bari - Aldo Moro
Italy


June 12th, 2024

Geological challenges in the identification of Archean life

Life in the Archean is often associated to the widespread occurrence of stromatolites, laminated bioconstructions that are believed to be formed by communities of cyanobacteria. This is always true for modern stromatolites but how can we prove that laminated buildups formed in the Archean are indeed microbialites? In the absence of clear micromorphologies and biomarkers, geological and geochemical tools come to the rescue and give us the opportunity to unambiguously identify traces of early life.
Link to Video