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Great Salt Lake as an Astrobiology Analogue for Ancient Martian Hypersaline Aqueous Systems

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Great Salt Lake Biology

Abstract

Great Salt Lake (GSL), Utah, is a thalassohaline terminal lake that currently occupies the Bonneville Basin, a depression in the larger Great Basin area of the western United States. Natural processes and climate conditions create a dynamic ecosystem with shifting salinity gradients and lake levels. The hypersaline north arm of GSL provides a model for exploring the limits of life on Earth and for potential life on other space bodies, especially the ancient closed-basin systems on Mars. The north arm water features hundreds of species of halophilic microorganisms with cellular strategies that allow them to live in hypersaline environments and high doses of ultraviolet light. These microbes also survive desiccation and can become entrapped in minerals as they are formed. The modern GSL evaporitic environment, generated by halite and gypsum precipitation events, illuminates the initial steps in preservation of biological material over geologic time. These minerals accumulate on the desiccated shores, in the sediment, and in the surrounding evaporite deposits and have been shown to have biopreservation abilities, protecting halophilic cells and their molecules inside brine fluid inclusions within the crystal structure. Entrapment allows in situ analyses of microbial diversity, which can be studied as a function of salt mineral assemblage. Globally across Mars these same types of evaporite precipitation events took place in closed-basin lake systems where surface waters have evaporated, leaving behind mineral vein structures composed of gypsum and other sulfate salts that have been modified or dissolved from later fluid shallow subsurface activity. We have chosen GSL as our analogue for Martian late Noachian/early Hesperian closed basin systems due to the overlapping evaporite mineralogy and fluid activity. Here we explore the transference of biological material and organics from hypersaline GSL brine to the minerals as they form in the water. We draw parallels to the evaporites extensively mapped on Mars, which likely formed in a similar way. These observations and insights, taken together, suggest GSL is an appropriate analogue for the study of ancient salt lakes and evaporites discovered on Mars, and what is more, the halophilic archaea that live in Earth’s salty lake may be good models for life elsewhere in our solar system.

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Acknowledgments

Funding for some of the work reported here was from the NASA Utah Space Grant Consortium to B.K.B. (NNX15A124H, Sub-Award 10037896WEST), and the Caltech/JPL Presidents and Directors Research Fund award to S.M.P. We would like to thank Jaimi Butler for her assistance with sample collection efforts in 2014. These samples led to the original proof of concept for in situ modern biogenic preservation and its application to potential extant halophilic life. We are also indebted to Aaron Celestian for his analyses in mineral–microbe systems, mineral precipitation experiments, and his continued collaborations in our ongoing investigations. Finally, we would like to thank Frank Corsetti for investigation guidance and support since the beginning of this investigation.

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  1. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Scott M. Perl

  2. Mineral Sciences, Los Angeles Natural History Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Scott M. Perl

  3. NASA-JPL Origins and Habitability Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Scott M. Perl

  4. Great Salt Lake Institute and Department of Biology, Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Bonnie K. Baxter

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  1. Great Salt Lake Institute, Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Bonnie K. Baxter

  2. Great Salt Lake Institute, Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Jaimi K. Butler

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Perl, S.M., Baxter, B.K. (2020). Great Salt Lake as an Astrobiology Analogue for Ancient Martian Hypersaline Aqueous Systems. In: Baxter, B., Butler, J. (eds) Great Salt Lake Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40352-2_16

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