Jeffrey L. Bada

Last updated

Jeffrey L. Bada
Born (1942-09-10) September 10, 1942 (age 80)
San Diego, California
NationalityAmerican
Citizenship US
Alma mater San Diego State University (BS)
University of California, San Diego (PhD)
Known forStudying the origin of life
Scientific career
Fields Chemistry
Astrobiology
Institutions University of California, San Diego
Doctoral advisor Stanley Miller
Website Homepage at SCRIPPS

Jeffrey L. Bada (born September 10, 1942) [1] is an American chemist known for his works in the study of the origin of life. He is Distinguished Research Professor of Marine Chemistry and former Director of the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT) in Exobiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. Bada has played a pioneering role in the development of the Mars Organic Detector (MOD) instrument package that is designed to search for amino acids and other organic compounds directly on the surface of Mars during future ESA and NASA missions. [2]

Contents

Education and career

Bada studied at the San Diego State University and obtained BS in chemistry in 1965. He wanted to become a theoretical chemist, applying quantum mechanics to chemistry and had no prior interest in prebiotic chemistry. Then he met Stanley Miller at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) who inspired him to take up the spark discharge experiment a step forward by studying amino acid stability. Bada completed PhD in Chemistry in 1968 under Miller's supervision. [3] He worked as Research Fellow at the Hoffman Labs of the Department of Geological Science at Harvard University for one year. [1] In 1968 he joined the UCSD Department of Chemistry as Instructor, and became Assistant Professor of Marine Chemistry in 1969. He became Associate Professor in 1974 and full professor in 1980. Between 1980 and 2009 he was Director of NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT) in Exobiology. In 2009 he was promoted to Distinguished Professor, and in 2010 to Distinguished Research Professor. He has more than 200 technical publications. [2]

Professional achievements

Geochemistry

As a marine geochemist, Bada made significant research in geochronology. During the 1970s and 1980s he developed an important technique of marine sediment dating through the measurement of the racemisation rates of amino acids. This method is useful for dating a large span in geological time scale. This is useful in marine biology, palaeontology and archaeology for dating millions of years old organic materials based on their amino acid content. [1] [4]

Exobiology

Bada is a leading scientist in the study of organic compounds outside of the Earth. Among his works was the analysis of the Martian meteorite Nakhla, which fell in Egypt in 1911. His team found aspartic acid, glutamic acids, glycine, alanine, beta-alanine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid as the most abundant amino acids in the meteorite. [5] This a supports the notion that the organic building blocks of life could be naturally synthesized and were present in the making of the solar system. He and his team also developed a Mars Organic Analyzer (MOA), which is a microfabricated capillary electrophoresis (CE) instrument for sensitive amino acid biomarker analysis. [6] The device is useful in planetary exploration such as for the analysis of even trace amounts of amino acids, mono- and diaminoalkanes, amino sugars, nucleobases, and nucleobase degradation products from living and non-living materials. [7]

Prebiotic chemistry

Jeffrey Bada is best known for his research on the origin of life, following his mentor Miller, whose laboratory he inherited. In fact his most famous works, perhaps, are his reassessment and validation of the original Miller's experiments. [8] [9] In 1999, Miller had a stroke and on thinking of his medical condition, he donated everything in his office to Bada's laboratory. [3] Just before Miller's death in 2007, several cardboard boxes containing vials of dried residues were found in his laboratory at UCSD. The labels indicated that some were from Miller's original 1952–1954 experiments, produced by using three different apparatuses, and one from 1958, which included H2S in the gaseous mixture for the first time and the result never published. In 2008 Bada and his team reported a re-analysis of the 1952 samples using more sensitive techniques, such as high-performance liquid chromatography and liquid chromatography–time of flight mass spectrometry. Their result showed the synthesis of 22 amino acids and 5 amines, revealing that the original Miller experiment produced many more compounds than previously believed. [10] Miller's report of 1953 mentioned synthesis of only glycine, α- and β-alanine, with uncertain aspartic acid and GABA. [11] In addition Bada also analysed the unreported 1958 samples in 2011, from which 23 amino acids and 4 amines, including 7 organosulfur compounds, were detected. [12] [13] [14] [15]

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miller–Urey experiment</span> Chemical experiment that simulated conditions on the early Earth and tested the origin of life

The Miller–Urey experiment (or Miller experiment) is a famous chemistry experiment that simulated the conditions thought at the time (1952) to be present in the atmosphere of the early, prebiotic Earth, in order to test the hypothesis of the chemical origin of life under those conditions. The experiment used water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen (H2), and an electric arc (the latter simulating hypothesized lightning).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RNA world</span> Hypothetical stage in the early evolutionary history of life on Earth

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alanine</span> Α-amino acid that is used in the biosynthesis of proteins

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nucleobase</span> Nitrogen-containing biological compounds that form nucleosides

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Stanley Lloyd Miller was an American chemist who made landmark experiments in the origin of life by demonstrating that a wide range of vital organic compounds can be synthesized by fairly simple chemical processes from inorganic substances. In 1952 he carried out the Miller–Urey experiment, which showed that complex organic molecules could be synthesised from inorganic precursors. The experiment was widely reported, and provided support for the idea that the chemical evolution of the early Earth had led to the natural synthesis of chemical building blocks of life from inanimate inorganic molecules. He has been described as the "father of prebiotic chemistry".

The iron–sulfur world hypothesis is a set of proposals for the origin of life and the early evolution of life advanced in a series of articles between 1988 and 1992 by Günter Wächtershäuser, a Munich patent lawyer with a degree in chemistry, who had been encouraged and supported by philosopher Karl R. Popper to publish his ideas. The hypothesis proposes that early life may have formed on the surface of iron sulfide minerals, hence the name. It was developed by retrodiction from extant biochemistry in conjunction with chemical experiments.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Linda Ellis (2000). Archaeological Method and Theory: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. p. 67. ISBN   9780203801567.
  2. 1 2 "Curriculum Vitae: Jeffrey L. Bada" (PDF). Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. 2013. Retrieved September 9, 2013.
  3. 1 2 Claudia Dreifus (May 17, 2010). "A Marine Chemist Studies How Life Began". The New York Times. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
  4. ↑ Bada JL (1970). "Marine sediments: dating by the racemization of amino acids". Science. 170 (3959): 730–732. Bibcode:1970Sci...170..730B. doi:10.1126/science.170.3959.730. PMID   5479627. S2CID   6124313.
  5. ↑ Glavin DP, Bada JL, Brinton KL, McDonald GD (1999). "Amino acids in the Martian meteorite Nakhla". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 96 (16): 8835–8839. Bibcode:1999PNAS...96.8835G. doi: 10.1073/pnas.96.16.8835 . PMC   17693 . PMID   10430856.
  6. ↑ Skelley AM, Scherer JR, Aubrey AD, Grover WH, Ivester RH, Ehrenfreund P, Grunthaner FJ, Bada JL, Mathies RA (2005). "Development and evaluation of a microdevice for amino acid biomarker detection and analysis on Mars". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 102 (4): 1041–1046. Bibcode:2005PNAS..102.1041S. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0406798102 . PMC   545824 . PMID   15657130.
  7. ↑ Skelley AM, Cleaves HJ, Jayarajah CN, Bada JL, Mathies RA (2006). "Application of the Mars Organic Analyzer to nucleobase and amine biomarker detection". Astrobiology. 6 (6): 824–837. Bibcode:2006AsBio...6..824S. doi:10.1089/ast.2006.6.824. PMID   17155883.
  8. ↑ Douglas Fox (March 28, 2007). "Primordial Soup's On: Scientists Repeat Evolution's Most Famous Experiment". Scientific American. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
  9. ↑ Amina Khan (March 26, 2011). "New data mined from historic 'primordial soup' study". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
  10. ↑ Johnson AP, Cleaves HJ, Dworkin JP, Glavin DP, Lazcano A, Bada JL (2008). "The Miller volcanic spark discharge experiment". Science. 322 (5900): 404. Bibcode:2008Sci...322..404J. doi:10.1126/science.1161527. PMID   18927386. S2CID   10134423.
  11. ↑ Miller SL (1953). "Production of amino acids under possible primitive earth conditions". Science. 117 (3046): 528–529. Bibcode:1953Sci...117..528M. doi:10.1126/science.117.3046.528. PMID   13056598.
  12. ↑ Bada JL (2013). "New insights into prebiotic chemistry from Stanley Miller's spark discharge experiments". Chem Soc Rev. 42 (5): 2186–2196. doi:10.1039/c3cs35433d. PMID   23340907.
  13. ↑ Parker ET, Cleaves HJ, Dworkin JP, Glavin DP, Callahan M, Aubrey A, Lazcano A, Bada JL (2011). "Primordial synthesis of amines and amino acids in a 1958 Miller H2S-rich spark discharge experiment". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 108 (12): 5526–5531. Bibcode:2011PNAS..108.5526P. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1019191108 . hdl:2060/20110013464. PMC   3078417 . PMID   21422282.
  14. ↑ Keim, Brandon (October 16, 2008). "Forgotten Experiment May Explain Origins of Life". Wired Magazine . Retrieved March 22, 2011.
  15. ↑ Steigerwald, Bill (October 16, 2008). "Volcanoes May Have Provided Sparks and Chemistry for First Life". NASA Goddard Space Flight Center . Retrieved March 22, 2011.
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