Friday May 6, 2022 (9:30 – 11:00AM Pacific Time)

Living at the Extremes: Extremophiles and the Limits of Life in a Planetary Context
Nancy Merino (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
Diana Bojanova (University of Southern California)
Michael Wong (Carnegie Institution for Science)

In the context of prokaryotic life, extremophiles are microorganisms that thrive under harsh conditions, including pH, temperature, salinity, and pressure. In fact, many extremophiles persist under multiple extremes and are known as polyextremophiles. Research on extremophiles has revealed key microbial adaptations to extreme environments and enabled us to hypothesize about the origins and evolution of life on Earth. This research also has implications for assessing the feasibility and the search for life on other planetary and celestial bodies. In this virtual meeting, Nancy Merino (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), Diana Bojanova (University of Southern California), and Michael Wong (Carnegie Institution for Science) will discuss their paper titled “Living at the Extremes: Extremophiles and the Limits of Life in a Planetary Context” (written with co-authors Heidi Aronson, Jayme Feyhl-Buska, Shu Zhang and Donato Giovannelli) in which they review the biospace that life operates on Earth and the potential for life elsewhere.

Register in advance of the meeting for connection information.