Pedagogical Platform

Study various aspects of the role of meteorite impacts on the origin of life

Asteroids, formed from the solids and primitive organic matter of the protosolar disk, are considered to be the remnants of the Training of telluric planets like the Earth. On our planet, fragments of asteroids, known as meteorites, reach us for detailed analysis. This project focuses on a particular class of meteorites, those rich in organic matter: carbonaceous chondrites.
These carbonaceous chondrites show, through their mineralogy, traces of a process that took place on their parent asteroid over 4 billion years ago, known as aqueous alteration. During this alteration, organic matter evolved alongside the mineral phase. The project focuses in particular on the simultaneous alteration of both phases (organic and mineral), seeking to understand how it may have influenced the present-day composition of carbonaceous chondrites.

This project, proposed by the PIIM, CEREGE and LCE laboratories at Aix Marseille Université, aims to retrace the origins of our solar system by analyzing extraterrestrial samples such as meteorites, and developing laboratory experiments to simulate the formation pathways of these objects.

Understanding the emergence of life is one of the most exciting and complex questions in science. Most research focuses either on the Training of organic molecules, or on the mechanisms that provide the energy necessary for the emergence of life. Our project takes a unique interdisciplinary approach by combining these two perspectives. We propose that minerals present in alkaline hydrothermal vents (AHFs) may have created the organic molecules essential to life using an energy-producing mechanism common to living organisms, known as chemosmosis, which generates the necessary free energy.

At BIP, in collaboration with PIIM, we have developed mineral membranes that mimic the chemical conditions of AMPs in order to study both the formation of organic molecules and the process of chemosmosis. During the internship, students will work at the interface of mineralogy and chemistry, using tools from biology and physics to explore these fascinating processes.

Some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn harbor oceans of liquid water beneath their surfaces. The Origins Institute is investigating the possibility that these oceans could harbor life forms, and that they could be detected by space probes. These studies include the cultivation of extremophilic micro-organisms in conditions representing these oceans, analysis of the chemical signatures of these organisms, modeling of the evolution of volatiles in the ocean, and laboratory experimentation on the evolution of signatures on the surface of ice moons (under irradiation). This work is being carried out in conjunction with space missions to ice moons in the solar system (European Space Agency's JUICE, NASA's Europa Clipper).

The IGS laboratory is working to understand how Pandoraviridae create new genes and the impact on their evolution and physiology (PandoNovo project ANR-22-CE12-0041). One step is to understand how and when these genes are translated during the infectious cycle.

Working on the PACA-Bioinfo platform, the IGS's computing infrastructure, the candidate will set up techniques for processing and bioinformatics analysis of ribo-seq data, through a targeted study of a giant virus and its host. He/she will work in a naturally interdisciplinary environment, where it will be necessary to understand the biology of the organisms studied (in this case, the virus and its host), as well as the IT aspects of data handling in a highly technical context (computing cluster). He/she will identify the most efficient programs best suited to this study. He/she will implement them on the available data and, if possible, provide a processing pipeline that can be transposed to other experiments. In a project-type approach, generalizable to other professional environments, he/she will analyze the results and present them to the scientific manager. He/she will monitor and participate in the integration of the new type of data into the laboratory's ecosystem, in line with the FAIR principles of open science.

During the impact or atmospheric explosion of small asteroids on Earth, part of the Earth's surface may be vitrified or even ejected several hundred kilometers from the impact zone (this is known as tektite). The study of these impact glasses provides us with information on the physico-chemical conditions at the time of impact, but also on the frequency of these past catastrophic events, which sometimes left no other traces such as impact craters.
The aim of the proposed project is to study various samples of natural glass, in order to determine the criteria for recognizing impact glass and determining its Training mechanisms. The techniques used will include optical and electron microscopy, chemical micro-analysis, IR and Raman spectrometry, etc.
Laboratories involved include CEREGE, PIIM and CINaM (list not necessarily exhaustive).

This subject will offer at least one M2 internship in 2025, but may also be open to L2 or L3 projects as early as 2024-2025.

Titan, Saturn's largest satellite, is the only one in the solar system to have a dense atmosphere (1.5 bar) composed mainly of nitrogen and a few percent methane. Subjected to various sources of irradiation, this atmosphere is a highly reactive medium, evolving through molecular growth and the ongoing production of aerosols. Among the molecules formed, hydrocarbons (C6H6, C4H2...) and nitriles (C2H3CN, HCN...) are known to condense in the lower stratosphere and lead to the training of icy particles. During their stay in the lower atmosphere (stratosphere and troposphere), these particles are then exposed to radiation at wavelengths above 230 nm, and can evolve chemically.
The aim of this project is to study the aging of ices formed in Titan's lower stratosphere, either pure or adsorbed on the surface of aerosol analogues in Titan's upper atmosphere.

Le projet portera sur l’échantillonnage microbiologique, physique et chimique de
l’atmosphère pour aborder les mécanismes de dissémination de la vie par les voies aériennes.
Objectifs :

• Faire un état des lieux des méthodes de collecte disponibles par domaine
• Budgétiser les différentes méthodes
• Identifier la/les stratégie(s) de collecte la/les plus adaptée(s) au projet
• Identifier et contacter les laboratoires partenaires
• Obtenir un financement
• Résoudre les verrous techniques
• Mener la collecte
• Analyser (ou faire analyser) les données

Au moins une partie des analyses des échantillons pourra être menée au sein du plateau
technique de l’institut qui agrège un grand nombre d’instruments expérimentaux et un savoir-
faire technique et technologique.