NASA Postdoctoral Program - ICAR - Engine of Innovation: How Compartmentalization Drives Evolution of Novelty and Efficiency Across Scales

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. 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. This specific opportunity focuses on compartmentalization research in astrobiology, exploring how compartmentalization increases flexibility and efficiency in acquiring, processing and conserving resources across scales from the molecular to the ecological. The ICAR team will explore the evolution and functional consequences of compartmentalization across scales spanning four levels of complexity: encapsulation of reactive organic and inorganic constituents in a primordial membrane; protected environments within cells created by protein-protein interactions; compartmentalization of genomes within cells created by successive rounds of endosymbiosis; and compartmentalization of metabolic processes among cells created by syntrophic interactions. Fellows work with leading scientists at NASA-affiliated research institutes to advance understanding of how self-replicating molecules achieved cellularity and crossed the Darwinian threshold.