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The Ames Microbial Ecology/Biogeochemistry Research Lab, in combination with the ScienceDesk team, has made significant progress in realizing a greenhouse "co-laboratory," which will be shared by members of the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Early Microbial Ecosystems Research Group (EMERG). (See figure 1.) The greenhouse facility is being used to maintain and perform manipulations of field-collected microbial mats. Microbial mats, extant representatives of Earth's earliest ecosystems, are highly dynamic communities of microorganisms that exhibit extremely high rates of metabolic processes. Maintaining the structure and function of these communities outside the natural environment is, therefore, a challenge. Using the greenhouse constructed on the roof of Building N239, mats that resemble naturally occurring communities have been maintained over a year after field collection. In FY00 it was determined that the greenhouse-maintained mats sustain natural rates of biogeochemical processes. This facility, therefore, is useful to support continued measurements of the rates and conditions under which various trace-gases are emitted and/or consumed by microbial mats and stromatolites. The greenhouse mats will be used to investigate the effects of early Earth environmental conditions on the rates of trace- gas production and consumption in the microbial mats, a period of Earth's history no longer available to us for direct measurement. These measurements are also relevant to the search for life on extrasolar planets, where the most promising search strategy involves the detection of possibly biogenic gases using infrared spectrometry. Space-based interferometers, such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder, should be able to resolve the spectra of several biologically important trace gases in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, possibly within 10-15 years.
The greenhouse represents a unique facility and a unique resource to be shared among EMERG team members. The scientific objectives of the team require multiple collaborators to conduct and analyze measurements of mat parameters on a frequent basis over many weeks. However, pragmatics and funding constraints inhibit the productivity of the distributed team and prevent full utilization of the greenhouse. The construction of a co-laboratory--in which human scientists and intelligent software agents work together to perform experiments--will alleviate demanding proximity and time requirements that affect productivity. Rather than placing the burden solely on local team members, a co-laboratory will enable an entire distributed investigator team to share responsibility for experimentation and data collection.
This motivation has led to construction of a co-laboratory designed to enable the geograph-ically distributed group of EMERG scientists to plan greenhouse experiments, operate scientific equipment, take experimental measurements, share results, and collaborate in real time with remote colleagues. Intelligent software agents will assist in the experi-mentation process, controlling the hardware, recording results, and interacting with the scientists via e-mail. As part of the initial hardware development for the co-laboratory, an X,Y,Z positioning table that is capable of automatically positioning sophisticated instruments at any location in the mats has been constructed. The instrument package currently includes microelectrodes, a light sensor, a chlorophyll fluorometer, a surface-detection device, and a fiber-optic spectrometer. The positioning system and the instrumentation package are viewable over the Internet (http://greenhouse.arc.nasa.gov) via a webcam hooked up to a computer located in the greenhouse. Next implementation steps involve controlling the positioning table and equipment remotely over the Internet.
Point of Contact: B. Bebout
(650) 604-3227
bbebout@mail.arc.nasa.gov
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Fig. 1. Diagrammatic representation of the greenhouse co-laboratory with photographs of the hardware already in place.
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