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Jeffrey Lee Bada (September 10, 1942 – September 1, 2024) was an American chemist known for his works in the study of the origin of life. He was a distinguished research professor of marine chemistry and a director of the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT) in exobiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. Bada played a pioneering role in the development of the Mars Organic Detector (MOD) instrument package that is designed to search for amino acids and other organic compounds directly on the surface of Mars during future ESA and NASA missions.

Biography

Born on September 10, 1942, Bada studied at San Diego State University and obtained a BS in chemistry in 1965. He wanted to become a theoretical chemist, applying quantum mechanics to chemistry and had no prior interest in prebiotic chemistry. He met Stanley Miller at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), who inspired him to take up the spark discharge experiment a step forward by studying amino acid stability. Bada completed his PhD in chemistry in 1968 under Miller's supervision. He worked as research fellow at the Hoffman Labs of the department of geological science at Harvard University for one year. In 1968, he joined the UCSD Department of Chemistry as instructor, and became assistant professor of marine chemistry in 1969. He became associate professor in 1974 and full professor in 1980. Between 1980 and 2009 he was director of NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT) in Exobiology. In 2009 he was promoted to distinguished professor, and in 2010 to distinguished research professor. He released more than 200 technical publications. Bada died in San Diego on September 1, 2024, at the age of 81.

Professional achievements

Geochemistry

As a marine geochemist, Bada did significant research in geochronology. During the 1970s and 1980s, he developed an important technique of marine sediment dating through the measurement of the racemization rates of amino acids. This method is useful for dating a large span in geological time scale. This is useful in marine biology, paleontology, and archaeology for dating millions of years old organic materials based on their amino acid content.

Exobiology

Bada was a leading scientist in the study of organic compounds outside of the Earth. Among his works was the analysis of the Martian meteorite Nakhla, which fell in Egypt in 1911. His team found aspartic acid, glutamic acids, glycine, alanine, beta-alanine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid as the most abundant amino acids in the meteorite. This a supports the notion that the organic building blocks of life could be naturally synthesized and were present in the making of the solar system. He and his team also developed a Mars Organic Analyzer (MOA), which is a microfabricated capillary electrophoresis (CE) instrument for sensitive amino acid biomarker analysis. The device is useful in planetary exploration such as for the analysis of even trace amounts of amino acids, mono- and diaminoalkanes, amino sugars, nucleobases, and nucleobase degradation products from living and non-living materials.

Prebiotic chemistry

Jeffrey Bada is best known for his research on the origin of life, following his mentor Miller, whose laboratory he inherited. His most famous works, perhaps, are his reassessment and validation of the original Miller's experiments. In 1999, Miller had a stroke and on thinking of his medical condition, he donated everything in his office to Bada's laboratory. Just before Miller's death in 2007, several cardboard boxes containing vials of dried residues were found in his laboratory at UCSD. The labels indicated that some were from Miller's original 1952–1954 experiments, produced by using three different apparatuses, and one from 1958, which included H₂S in the gaseous mixture for the first time and the result never published. In 2008 Bada and his team reported a re-analysis of the 1952 samples using more sensitive techniques, such as high-performance liquid chromatography and liquid chromatography–time of flight mass spectrometry. Their result showed the synthesis of 22 amino acids and 5 amines, revealing that the original Miller experiment produced many more compounds than previously believed. Miller's report of 1953 mentioned synthesis of only glycine, α- and β-alanine, with uncertain aspartic acid and GABA. In addition Bada also analysed the unreported 1958 samples in 2011, from which 23 amino acids and 4 amines, including 7 organosulfur compounds, were detected.

References

1. ^ "Curriculum Vitae: Jeffrey L. Bada" (PDF). Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. 2013. Retrieved September 9, 2013.
2. ^ Linda Ellis (2000). Archaeological Method and Theory: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. p. 67. ISBN 9780203801567.
3. ^ Claudia Dreifus (May 17, 2010). "A Marine Chemist Studies How Life Began". The New York Times. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
4. "Jeffrey Lee Bada". Echovita. Retrieved September 23, 2024.
5. Bada JL (1970). "Marine sediments: dating by the racemization of amino acids". Science. 170 (3959): 730–732. Bibcode:1970Sci...170..730B. doi:10.1126/science.170.3959.730. PMID 5479627. S2CID 6124313.
6. Glavin DP, Bada JL, Brinton KL, McDonald GD (1999). "Amino acids in the Martian meteorite Nakhla". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 96 (16): 8835–8839. Bibcode:1999PNAS...96.8835G. doi:10.1073/pnas.96.16.8835. PMC 17693. PMID 10430856.
7. Skelley AM, Scherer JR, Aubrey AD, Grover WH, Ivester RH, Ehrenfreund P, Grunthaner FJ, Bada JL, Mathies RA (2005). "Development and evaluation of a microdevice for amino acid biomarker detection and analysis on Mars". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 102 (4): 1041–1046. Bibcode:2005PNAS..102.1041S. doi:10.1073/pnas.0406798102. PMC 545824. PMID 15657130.
8. Skelley AM, Cleaves HJ, Jayarajah CN, Bada JL, Mathies RA (2006). "Application of the Mars Organic Analyzer to nucleobase and amine biomarker detection". Astrobiology. 6 (6): 824–837. Bibcode:2006AsBio...6..824S. doi:10.1089/ast.2006.6.824. PMID 17155883.
9. Douglas Fox (March 28, 2007). "Primordial Soup's On: Scientists Repeat Evolution's Most Famous Experiment". Scientific American. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
10. Amina Khan (March 26, 2011). "New data mined from historic 'primordial soup' study". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 10, 2013.
11. Johnson AP, Cleaves HJ, Dworkin JP, Glavin DP, Lazcano A, Bada JL (2008). "The Miller volcanic spark discharge experiment". Science. 322 (5900): 404. Bibcode:2008Sci...322..404J. doi:10.1126/science.1161527. PMID 18927386. S2CID 10134423.
12. Miller SL (1953). "Production of amino acids under possible primitive earth conditions". Science. 117 (3046): 528–529. Bibcode:1953Sci...117..528M. doi:10.1126/science.117.3046.528. PMID 13056598.
13. Bada JL (2013). "New insights into prebiotic chemistry from Stanley Miller's spark discharge experiments". Chem Soc Rev. 42 (5): 2186–2196. doi:10.1039/c3cs35433d. PMID 23340907.
14. Parker ET, Cleaves HJ, Dworkin JP, Glavin DP, Callahan M, Aubrey A, Lazcano A, Bada JL (2011). "Primordial synthesis of amines and amino acids in a 1958 Miller H₂S-rich spark discharge experiment". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 108 (12): 5526–5531. Bibcode:2011PNAS..108.5526P. doi:10.1073/pnas.1019191108. hdl:2060/20110013464. PMC 3078417. PMID 21422282.
15. Keim, Brandon (October 16, 2008). "Forgotten Experiment May Explain Origins of Life". Wired Magazine. Retrieved March 22, 2011.
16. Steigerwald, Bill (October 16, 2008). "Volcanoes May Have Provided Sparks and Chemistry for First Life". NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Archived from the original on September 22, 2020. Retrieved March 22, 2011.

External links

• Biodata at University of California, San Diego
• Family history at Mills County, Iowa Biography Directory

• 1942 births
• 2024 deaths
• American geochemists
• University of California, San Diego faculty
• San Diego State University alumni
• University of California, San Diego alumni
• People from San Diego
• American astrobiologists