William Sparks recently had a proposal, titled: “Detecting the Fundamental Chiral Building Blocks of Life”, selected by the NASA Exobiology funding program
Here is a Summary of Bill’s project:
We propose to expand our exploration of the rich diversity of chiral signatures, which we have already begun in the visible for photosynthetic organisms, into the UV. This focused, pilot program will identify and characterize chiral spectral transitions in the UV of relevant biotic and abiotic samples, intended to lead to a capability for critical diagnostic support for missions searching for life beyond Earth. These agnostic chiral biosignatures are present in the circular polarization spectrum, which may be obtained for both in situ and remote sensing applications.
In the laboratory, we propose to address the following goals and objectives:
- Measure UV circular polarization spectra of intact Ocean Worlds mission relevant microbial organisms to quantify the amplitude and character of their chiral signatures, indicative of life, establishing the presence and utility of agnostic UV biosignatures.
- Assess the retention of such biosignatures following exposure of chemotroph microbial samples to cryogenic temperatures, a high radiation dosage and extreme vacuum, analogous to conditions at Europa.
- Confront the biological results with polarization characteristics of natural abiotic meteoritic material known to contain a small enantiomeric excess, and determine the degree to which this can be distinguished from biological signatures, to provide relevant abiotic control, and reduce or retire false positive concerns.