Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T14:25:50.944Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Interplanetary transmissions of life in an evolutionary context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2020

Ian von Hegner Open the ORCID record for Ian von Hegner [Opens in a new window]
Ian von Hegner*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 116, DK-8000Aarhus C, Denmark
*
Author for correspondence: Ian von Hegner, E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The theory of lithopanspermia proposes the natural exchange of organisms between solar system bodies through meteorites. The focus of this theory comprises three distinct stages: planetary ejection, interplanetary transit and planetary entry. However, it is debatable whether organisms transported within the ejecta can survive all three stages. If the conjecture is granted, that life can indeed be safely transmitted from one world to another, then it is not only a topic pertaining to planetary science but also biological sciences. Hence, these stages are only the first three factors of the equation. The other factors for successful lithopanspermia are the quality, quantity and evolutionary strategy of the transmitted organisms. When expanding into new environments, invading organisms often do not survive in the first attempt and usually require several attempts through propagule pressure to obtain a foothold. There is a crucial difference between this terrestrial situation and the one brought about by lithopanspermia. While invasive species on Earth repeatedly enters a new habitat, a species pragmatically arrives on another solar system body only once; thus, an all-or-nothing response will be in effect. The species must survive in the first attempt, which limits the probability of survival. In addition, evolution sets a boundary through the existence of an inverse proportionality between the exchanges of life between two worlds, thus further restricting the probability of survival. However, terrestrial populations often encounter unpredictable and variable environmental conditions, which in turn necessitates an evolutionary response. Thus, one evolutionary mode in particular, bet hedging, is the evolutionary strategy that best smooth out this inverse proportionality. This is achieved by generating diversity even among a colony of genetically identical organisms. This variability in individual risk-taking increases the probability of survival and allows organisms to colonize more diverse environments. The present analysis to understand conditions relevant to a bacterial colony arriving in a new planetary environment provides a bridge between the theory of bet hedging, invasive range expansion and planetary science.

Keywords

Astrobiologybet hedginglithopanspermiaMars
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , August 2020 , pp. 335 - 348
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akamatsu, T and Taguchi, H (2001) Incorporation of the whole chromosomal DNA in protoplast lysates into competent cells of Bacillus subtilis. Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry 65, 823–829.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Akcakaya, HR, Burgman, MA and Ginzburg, LR (1999) Applied Population Ecology: Principles and Computer Exercises Using Ramas® EcoLab 2.0., Sinauer Press.Google Scholar
Alberts, B (2002) Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th Edn, New York: Garland Science.Google Scholar
Beaumont, HJ, Gallie, J, Kost, C, Ferguson, GC and Rainey, PB (2009) Experimental evolution of bet hedging. Nature 462, 90–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beech, M, Coulson, IM and Comte, M (2018) Lithopanspermia – The terrestrial input during the past 550 million years. American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics 6, 81–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benardini, JN, Sawyer, J, Venkateswaran, K and Nicholson, WL (2003) Spore UV and acceleration resistance of endolithic Bacillus pumilus and B. subtilis Isolates obtained from Sonoran desert basalt: implications for lithopanspermia. Astrobiology 3, 709–717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blokesch, M (2016) Natural competence for transformation. Current Biology 26, R1126–R1130.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bravo, A, Ruiz-Cruz, S, Alkorta, I and Espinosa, M (2018) When humans met superbugs: strategies to tackle bacterial resistances to antibiotics. Biomolecular Concepts 9, 216–226.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brennecka, GA, Borg, LE and Wadhwa, M (2014) Insights into the Martian mantle: the age and isotopics of the meteorite fall Tissint. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 49, 412–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casadesus, J and Low, DA (2013) Programmed heterogeneity: epigenetic mechanisms in Bacteria. Journal of Biological Chemistry 288, 13929–13935.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, I, Christie, PJ and Dubnau, D (2005) The ins and outs of DNA transfer in bacteria. Science (New York, N.Y.) 310, 1456–1460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deamer, DW and Pashley, RM (1989) Amphiphilic components of the Murchison carbonaceous chondrite: surface properties and membrane formation. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 19, 21–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Montlivault, LCE-J-F Conjectures sur la réunion de la lune à la terre, et des satellites en général à leur planète principale… par un ancien officier de marine Reliure inconnue, Paris, 1821.Google Scholar
de Vera, J-P, Alawi, MB, Baque, T, Billi, M, Böttger, D, Berger, U, Bohmeier, T, Cockell, M, Charles Demets, R, de la Torre Rosa Noetzel, E, Elsaesser, H, Fagliarone, A, Fiedler, C, Foing, A, Foucher, B, Fritz, F, Hanke, J, Herzog, F, Horneck, T, Hübers, G, Huwe, H-W, Joshi, B, Kozyrovska, J, Kruchten, N, Lasch, M, Lee, P, Leuko, N, Leya, S, Lorek, T, Martinez-Frıas, A, Meessen, J, Moritz, J, Moeller, S, Olsson-Francis, R, Onofri, K, Ott, S, Pacelli, S, Podolich, C, Rabbow, O, Reitz, E, Rettberg, G, Reva, P, Rothschild, O, Sancho, LG, Schulze-Makuch, L, Selbmann, D, Serrano, L, Szewzyk, P, Verseux, U, Wadsworth, C, Wagner, J, Westall, D, Frances Wolter, D and Laura, Z (2019) Limits of life and the habitability of Mars: the ESA space experiment BIOMEX on the ISS. Astrobiology 19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Errington, J (2003) Regulation of endospore formation in Bacillus subtilis. Nature Reviews Microbiology 1, 117–126.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fajardo-Cavazos, P and Nicholson, WL (2006) Bacillus Endospores isolated from granite: close molecular relationships to globally distributed Bacillus Spp. From endolithic and extreme environments. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 72, 2856–2863.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gilbert, W (1986) The RNA world. Nature 319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haldeman, DS, Amy, PS, White, DC and Ringelberg, DB (1994) Changes in bacteria recoverable from subsurface volcanic rock samples during storage at 48°C. Environmental Microbiology 60, 2697–2703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horneck, G, Stöffler, D, Ott, S, Hornemann, U, Cockell, CS, Möller, R, Meyer, C, de Vera, J-P, Fritz, J, Schade, S and Artemieva, NA (2008) Microbial rock inhabitants survive hypervelocity impacts on Mars-like host planets: first phase of lithopanspermia experimentally tested. Astrobiology 8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Irving, T (2020) Available at http//www.imca.cc/mars/martian-meteorites-list.htm.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, CL and Viollier, PH (2012) Decoding Caulobacter Development. FEMS Microbiology Reviews 36, 193–205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liu, MR, Liu Wei-Chung, DR and Shen, S-F (2019) A continuum of biological adaptations to the environmental fluctuation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B 286.Google ScholarPubMed
Lockwood, JL, Cassey, P and Blackburn, T (2005) The role of propagule pressure in explaining species invasions. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20, 223–228.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lynch, M and Lande, R 1993. Evolution and extinction in response to environmental change. In Kareiva, PM, Kingsolver, JG and Huey, RB (eds). Biotic Interactions and Global Change. Sinauer, Sunderland, Mass: Society for the study of evolution, pp. 234–250.Google Scholar
Martín, PV, Muñoz, MA and Pigolotti, S (2019) Bet-hedging strategies in expanding populations. PLoS Computational Biology 15, e1006529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mell, JC and Redfield, RJ (2014) Natural competence and the evolution of DNA uptake specificity. Journal of Bacteriology 196, 1471–1483.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mell, JC, Shumilina, S, Hall, IM and Redfield, RJ (2011) Transformation of natural genetic variation into Haemophilus influenzae genomes. PLoS Pathogens 7(7), e1002151.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Melosh, HJ (1988) The rocky road to panspermia. Nature 332, 687–688.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mileikowsky, C, Cucinotta, FA, Wilson, JW, Gladman, B, Horneck, G, Lindegren, L, Melosh, J, Rickman, H, Valtonen, M and Zheng, JQ (2000) Natural transfer of microbes in space; 1. From Mars to Earth and Earth to Mars. Icarus 145, 391–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirumur, (2011) Available at https://depositphotos.com/vector-images/bacterium.html.Google Scholar
Mirumur, (2014) Available at https://depositphotos.com/49770579/stock-illustration-e-coli-bacteria-isolated-red.html.Google Scholar
Moradigaravand, D and Engelstädter, J (2014) The impact of natural transformation on adaptation in spatially structured bacterial populations. Moradigaravand and Engelstädter BMC Evolutionary Biology 14.Google ScholarPubMed
Moxon, R, Bayliss, C and Hood, D (2006) Bacterial contingency loci: the role of simple sequence DNA repeats in bacterial adaptation. Annual Review of Genetics 40, 307–333.9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nicholson, WL (2009) Ancient micronauts: interplanetary transport of microbes by cosmic impacts. Trends in Microbiology 17, 243–250.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nicholson, WL, Munakarta, N, Horneck, G, Melosh, HJ and Setlow, P (2000) Resistance of Bacillus endospores to extreme terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews 64, 548–572.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nyquist, LE, Bogard, DD, Shih, C-Y, Greshake, A, Stöffler, D and Eugster, O (2001) Ages and geologic histories of martian meteorites. In Kallenbach, R, Geiss, J and Hartmann, WK (eds), Chronology and Evolution of Mars. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 105–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogura, MW, Harvey, MR and Preciado, VM (2017) Delayed bet-hedging resilience strategies under the environmental fluctuations. Physical Review E 95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oparin, AI (1957) The Origin of Life on Earth, 3rd Edn, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.Google Scholar
Pohorille, A and Deamer, D (2009) Self-assembly and function of primitive cell membranes. Research in Microbiology 160, 449–456.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rago, A, Kouvaris, K, Uller, T and Watson, R (2019) How adaptive plasticity evolves when selected against. PLoS Computational Biology 15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reed, TE, Waples, RS, Schindler, DE, Hard, JJ and Kinnison, MT (2010) Phenotypic plasticity and population viability: the importance of environmental predictability. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277, 3391–3400.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reid, IN, Sparks, WB, Lubow, S, McGrath, M, Livio, M, Valenti, J, Sowers, KR, Shukla, HD, MacAuley, S, Miller, T, Suvanasuthi, R, Belas, R, Colman, A, Robb, FT, DasSarma, P, Müller, JA, Coker, JA, Cavicchioli, R, Chen, F and DasSarma, S (2006) Terrestrial models for extraterrestrial life: methanogens and halophiles at martian temperatures. International Journal of Astrobiology 5, 89–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richter, H (1865) Zur Darwinschen Lehre. Schmidts Jahrb. Ges Med 126, 243–249.Google Scholar
Safran, SA (1994) Statistical Thermodynamics of Surfaces, Interfaces, and Membranes Statistical Thermodynamics of Surfaces, Interfaces, and Membranes, Journal of Statistical Physics, 78(3–4):1175–1177, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, Reading.Google Scholar
Saito, Y, Taguchi, H and Akamatsu, T (2006) DNA Taken into Bacillus subtilis competent cells by lysed-protoplast transformation is not ssDNA but dsDNA. Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering 101, 334–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seger, J and Brockmann, HJ (1987) What is bet-hedging? Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology 4, 182–211.Google Scholar
Segre, D, Ben-Eli, D, Deamer, DW and Lancet, D (2001) The lipid world. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere: The Journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life 31, 119–145.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shuster, DL and Weiss, BP (2005) Martian surface paleotemperatures from thermochronology of meteorites. Science (New York, N.Y.) 309, 594–597.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simons, AM (2011) Modes of response to the environmental change and the elusive empirical evidence for bet hedging. Proceedings. Biological Sciences 278(1712), 1601–1609.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Starrfelt, J and Kokko, H (2012) Bet-hedging – a triple trade-off between means, variances and correlations. Biological Reviews 87, 742–755.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
The Meteoritical Society (2020) Available at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php.Google Scholar
van der Woude, MW and Bäumler, AJ (2004) Phase and antigenic variation in bacteria. Clinical Microbiology Reviews 17, 581–611.8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veening, JW, Smits, WK and Kuipers, OP (2008a) Bistability, epigenetics, and bet-hedging in bacteria. Annual Review of Microbiology 62, 193–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veening, JW, Stewart, EJ, Berngruber, TW, Taddei, F, Kuipers, OP and Hamoen, LW (2008b) Bet-hedging and epigenetic inheritance in bacterial cell development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 105, 4393–4398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Hegner, I (2020) Extremophiles: a special or general case in the search for extra-terrestrial life? Extremophiles 24, online November 2019.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, AJ, Pemberton, JM, Pilkington, JG, Coltman, DW, Mifsud, DV, Clutton-Brock, TH and Kruuk, LEB (2006) Environmental coupling of selection and heritability limits evolution. PLoS Biology 4, 1270–1275.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Worth, RJ, Sigurdsson, S and House, CH (2013) Seeding life on the moons of the outer planets via lithopanspermia. Astrobiology 13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zeineldin, R Available at http://reemazeineldin.com/Liposome.html.Google Scholar