Goal 5
Understand how life in general evolves on
the molecular, organismal, and ecosystem levels.
Identify universal features of evolution, from the molecule to the biosphere, to understand better how life might have evolved on planets other than Earth, and how life might respond to novel environments in the future.
Although we recognize that the diversity of life as we know it was formed via Darwinian evolutionary processes, many questions remain about how these processes operate on Earth and how they might operate elsewhere. We have no clear model relating variation in molecular structure to fitness of an organism, for example. We must determine how our concepts of Darwinian evolution, originally developed for animals and plants, might require modification when applied to microbial communities. We have little understanding of how robustly Darwinian processes enable life to survive when faced with severe challenges. Such challenges include impacts by comets and asteroids (which might have contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs), the drying of a planet (which would have challenged any life that might have emerged on Mars), and the explosion of nearby supernovae (which creates all of the heavy elements necessary for life).
Research towards this Goal is challenging in part because of its breadth, which requires simultaneous comprehension of molecules, cells, organisms, the planet, and the cosmos. Further, to support NASA missions, we must ask not only how life on Earth did evolve, but also which aspects of Darwinian evolution on Earth are features of life generally, and which reflect historical accident unique in the history of the Earth.
- Objective 5.1—Evolution
of molecular systems. Examine the
behavior of artificial chemical systems that model processes of natural
selection to understand better the intimate interaction between chemistry
and biological evolution in the universe.
- Objective 5.2—Microbe and microbial ecosystem adaptation and evolution. Examine the molecular, genetic, and genomic processes of how microbes and microbial communities respond to environmental factors and perturbations to understand organismal and ecosystem level adaptation and evolution.