TY - JOUR

T1 - Exobiology of the Venusian Clouds: New Insights into Habitability through Terrestrial Models and Methods of Detection

AU - Kotsyurbenko, Oleg R.

AU - Cordova, Jaime A.

AU - Belov, Andrey A.

AU - Cheptsov, Vladimir S.

AU - Kölbl, Denise

AU - Khrunyk, Yuliya Y.

AU - Kryuchkova, Margarita O.

AU - Milojevic, Tetyana

AU - Mogul, Rakesh

AU - Sasaki, Satoshi

AU - Słowik, Grzegorz P.

AU - Snytnikov, Valery

AU - Vorobyova, Elena A.

N1 - Funding Information: The work presented here was motivated by fruitful dialogue at the 2019 Venus Cloud Layer Habitability and Landing Site Selection workshop organized by the Roscosmos-IKI/NASA Venera-D Joint Science Definition Team and supported by NASA HQ Planetary Science (A. Ocampo, Lead Venus Scientist) and Astrobiology programs (M. Voytek, Senior Scientist for Astrobiology) and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI RAN). JAC acknowledges the support of the Genome Sciences Training Program at University of Wisconsin–Madison. TM is grateful to the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) for providing support through the Elise-Richter Research fellowship (V333). We thank Sanjay Limaye for his support, including of this publication, and for resparking the conversation on Venus astrobiology. Publisher Copyright: © Copyright 2021, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers 2021.

PY - 2021/10/1

Y1 - 2021/10/1

N2 - The search for life beyond Earth has focused on Mars and the icy moons Europa and Enceladus, all of which are considered a safe haven for life due to evidence of current or past water. The surface of Venus, on the other hand, has extreme conditions that make it a nonhabitable environment to life as we know it. This is in contrast, however, to its cloud layer, which, while still an extreme environment, may prove to be a safe haven for some extreme forms of life similar to extremophiles on Earth. We consider the venusian clouds a habitable environment based on the presence of (1) a solvent for biochemical reactions, (2) appropriate physicochemical conditions, (3) available energy, and (4) biologically relevant elements. The diversity of extreme microbial ecosystems on Earth has allowed us to identify terrestrial chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms that may be analogs to putative venusian organisms. Here, we hypothesize and describe biological processes that may be performed by such organisms in the venusian clouds. To detect putative venusian organisms, we describe potential biosignature detection methods, which include metal-microbial interactions and optical methods. Finally, we describe currently available technology that can potentially be used for modeling and simulation experiments.

AB - The search for life beyond Earth has focused on Mars and the icy moons Europa and Enceladus, all of which are considered a safe haven for life due to evidence of current or past water. The surface of Venus, on the other hand, has extreme conditions that make it a nonhabitable environment to life as we know it. This is in contrast, however, to its cloud layer, which, while still an extreme environment, may prove to be a safe haven for some extreme forms of life similar to extremophiles on Earth. We consider the venusian clouds a habitable environment based on the presence of (1) a solvent for biochemical reactions, (2) appropriate physicochemical conditions, (3) available energy, and (4) biologically relevant elements. The diversity of extreme microbial ecosystems on Earth has allowed us to identify terrestrial chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms that may be analogs to putative venusian organisms. Here, we hypothesize and describe biological processes that may be performed by such organisms in the venusian clouds. To detect putative venusian organisms, we describe potential biosignature detection methods, which include metal-microbial interactions and optical methods. Finally, we describe currently available technology that can potentially be used for modeling and simulation experiments.

KW - Astrobiology

KW - Clouds

KW - Habitability

KW - Polyextremophiles

KW - Terrestrial models

KW - Venus

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85116516446&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1089/ast.2020.2296

DO - 10.1089/ast.2020.2296

M3 - Article

C2 - 34255549

AN - SCOPUS:85116516446

VL - 21

SP - 1186

EP - 1205

JO - Astrobiology

JF - Astrobiology

SN - 1531-1074

IS - 10

ER -