NASA Postdoctoral Program: Exploration of Meteoritic Peptides and their Relevance for the Origin of Life

This NASA Postdoctoral Program opportunity focuses on astrobiology research examining the exogenous delivery of prebiotic organic compounds to Earth. The fellowship will develop new, sensitive analytical tools to detect and quantify a wide array of abiotic peptides, which will then be used to examine the peptide chemical space in a suite of meteorites. This research explores how meteorites may have delivered complex biomolecules to early Earth and expanded the prebiotic chemical inventory en route to the formation of primitive proteins. The implications of this research will be directly relevant to the soluble organic analyses of samples returned by space flight missions, such as the NASA OSIRIS-REx and Mars Sample Return missions, as well as the JAXA Hayabusa2 and MMX missions. The NASA Postdoctoral Program offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology.