University of Arizona Ph.D. students gathered in the Sonett Space Sciences building on Dec. 8 to present their research and discuss other scientists’ research related to the study of astrobiology.
These students are a part of the Astrobiology Ambassadors Club, a club with the goal of bringing together students from all majors from astronomy to business and helping them connect and learn about the recent developments in astrobiology. Aside from that, they provide a pathway to pair undergraduate students with a research lab.
This was their end-of-the-semester meeting to host presentations of the students’ research.
Sori La, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate studying ecology and evolutionary biology, gave a presentation on her research on multicellularity.
La outlined the hierarchy of life, which maps how life becomes more complex as its parts become codependent on one another, starting with a single gene and then gradually growing to a gene network before creating multicelled life and more complex social structures.
But this is not a solid road, according to La. Some organisms do not advance beyond a certain stage and others, like algae, can actually regress. La explained that this is a key concept in multicellularity.
La showed attendees some footage she had taken during her research of some algae cells under a microscope, something she had taken a lot of pride in. She compared cells in the footage, with some being big and some small or others having a unique shape.
“These are each one organism,” La said, pointing to various differing algae cells. “And yet, their genome is very similar. What I’m studying is what the molecular basis is for how they became so complex, yet there not being a lot of genetic variation within the organisms.”
The ambassadors did not just talk about their own research, but also about the news related to other scientists in the astrobiology field. Mruthyunjay Kubendran Sumathi, a fifth-year UA Ph.D. candidate studying ecology and evolutionary biology, gave a presentation about two papers, one accepted and one controversial.
The controversial 2023 proposal proposed the creation of a law of increasing functional information. This proposal effectively means that all complex systems, whether biological or mineral, evolve towards increasing complexity. However, Sumathi noted that this research was questioned, as the field had existing laws to explain all phenomena that they needed to explain.
This paper used unacceptable science, as evolution is not a two-dimensional concept that goes from one thing to another, according to Sumathi. Had this paper involved an evolutionary biologist, Sumathi noted, they may have been able to do more accurate research.
Sumathi also noted, when talking about another paper, that scientists have a tendency to publish trends and data as soon as they see something they consider cool, in order to beat any other scientists to the punch.
“The fundamental questions on astrobiology are questions humans have been asking for as long as they’ve been asking,” said Arizona Astrobiology Center employee Noah Fleisher on why he was so fascinated by the topic.
According to Sam Greenwald, a UA freshman studying evolutionary biology who had attended the event, he enjoyed the chance to expose himself to an academic science setting. He mentioned that he was most interested in La’s algae research, as it was a topic he had learned about prior in a class.
“It was cool,” Greenwald said. “I’ve never sat in on a journal paper reading, you know?”
Greenwald added that he hoped to get an introduction to his scientific education as a UA freshman, something that the ambassadors aim to spread to more undergraduates on campus.
