Exciting news! We are thrilled to announce that FfAME has been awarded a Space Exploration Science Grant from the Chiwi Foundation (chiwi.ch) to expand our research on the origins of life. We are sincerely grateful to the Chiwi Foundation for its trust and support!
How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller?
Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase.
1/n
We've got some non-scientific news! To those looking for laboratory or office space in Alachua, FL, our building has recently had several areas become available. You can check them out at progresscenteralachua.com
Fresh off the lab press! 🧪🚀📰
50 years after Viking, do we understand the results?
A new Astrobiology article published by Benner et al. revisits the Viking mission results, presents a pro-biosignature hypothesis, and revives the belated dialectic.
Link below! 🔗
doi.org/10.1177/1531...
Fresh off the lab press! 📰 Scientists from FfAME, Tohoku Univ., and JAMSTEC report a prebiotic route to form long RNA from compounds containing 1-3 carbon, 0-4 hydrogen and 1-3 nitrogen atoms, in geological environments that occurred on early Earth ~4.3 billion years ago. 🔗 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Here is the recording of the talk "Venus’s Cloud Liquid Is More Light-Absorbing Than Your Blood"!
🚀 Our website just got an upgrade!
Explore our research, meet the team, and see how we’re advancing AEGIS, artificial DNA, and expanding the boundaries of science!
🔬 Check it out → ffame.org
#FfAME #AEGIS #Research #Astrobiology #Aptamers
Fresh off the lab press! New ACS Chem Bio paper from Benner and colleagues reveals improved Z nucleosides for AEGIS DNA, reducing deprotonation, Z:G mismatches, and boosting fidelity.
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
The talk will focus on the recent discoveries made @ffame.org about how organic compounds react in the presence of sulfuric acid and this related astrobiology on Venus! Link below!
astro.ufl.edu/colloquia/
Attention Astrobiology and Explorers!
Dr. Jan Spacek will be presenting a colloquium this Thursday Nov. 6th from 12:45 to 1:45 pm at the @ufresearch.bsky.social campus in the Bryant Space Science Center in Room 217.
This eLetter motivates the long-needed back-and-forth discussion of the astrobiological potential of near-surface Martian soils. This back-and-forth may belatedly undo the damage that this propagation of errors has done to Mars exploration.
This misunderstanding of this fundamental detail of Martian near surface geology has damaged efforts to design missions to explore Mars, now for 50 years.
A recent and prominent example comes in a NASA-endorsed 2021 "Community Report From the Biosignatures Standards of Evidence Workshop" chaired by Victoria Meadows (University of Washington) and Heather Graham (NASA-GFCS), whose premises included this propagated mistake.
Further repetition of these mistakes led to their further amplification and propagation. The compounded mistakes eventually appeared even in leading astrobiology textbooks and NASA-endorsed documents.
This evolved into the view that the Martian soil is "self-sterilizing" because it contained a powerful "mystery" oxidant, and therefore could not possibly hold extant Martian life.
This mistake published in Science caused multiple generations of astrobiologists to believe incorrectly that the Martian soil contained no organic molecules.
The eLetter is appended to the bottom of the Biemann et al. abstract at the link:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
A team of scientists at FfAME (Steve Benner, Jan Spacek, Clay Abraham) joined European astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch to publish this eLetter in Science that reexamines, at last, a misinterpretation published in Science by Klaus Biemann and his coworkers. Links below!
Feel free to follow us to keep up to date with our latest research and scientific contributions!
5) Enzymatic synthesis and nanopore sequencing of 12-letter supernumerary DNA
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
6) A folding motif formed with an expanded genetic alphabet
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
3) Artificial Genetic Systems: Self-Avoiding DNA in PCR and Multiplexed PCR
doi.org/10.1002/anie...
4) Artificially Expanded Genetic Information Systems for New Aptamer Technologies
doi.org/10.3390/biom...
We would like to highlight the following articles as an introduction to our research:
1) Hachimoji DNA and RNA: A genetic system with eight building blocks
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
2) Catalytic Synthesis of Polyribonucleic Acid on Prebiotic Rock Glasses
doi.org/10.1089/ast....
FfAME has a long standing history of producing a plethora of outstanding research covering nucleotide chemistry, synthetic biology, origins of life, astrobiology, and diagnostic technologies.
Hello Researchers and Science Enthusiasts,
We are proud to announce that the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (FfAME) now has a new social media presence!