Author Description

This volume contains 29 papers and presents the proceedings of six meetings and workshops all concerned with planetary biology and origins of life. Exobiology in Space reports on the results of space flight missions. Chemical and Early Biochemical Evolution covers topics such as formation of organic molecules in interstellar dust grains, the possible incorporation of such grains in comets and their contribution to the Earth's early atmosphere and hydrosphere. The papers presented on the subject of Life without Oxygen focus on the strategies of existing anaerobic organisms to achieve growth and replication wihout oxygen as electron acceptor. Evolutionary and exobiological aspects are discussed with methanogenic archaeobacteria, their biochemistry and microbiology being the centre point of interest. Early Environment of Mars - Potential for Chemical Evolution is featured in Chapter 4. The workshop on Planetary Protection Issues and Sample Return Missions explores a variety of subjects associated with the application of Planetary Protection (PP) procedures to sample return missions from comets and Mars.