| SUNDAY |
| 2:00 pm - 9:00 pm | Arrival and Check-in |
| 6:00 pm | Dinner |
| 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm | The subsurface as an abode and potential cradle for life's origin on Earth and other bodies in our solar system |
| Discussion Leader: Michael A. Meyer (Senior Scientist for Astrobiology NASA Headquarters) |
| 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm | Derek R. Lovely (Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst)
"Hydrogen-based communities reducing iron or carbon dioxide on ancient and modern Earth" |
| 8:30 pm - 9:30 pm | Jack D. Farmer (Arizona State Univ.)
"Exploring for fossil biosignatures in subsurface hydrothermal deposits" |
| 9.30 pm - | Welcome Mixer |
| MONDAY |
| 7:30 am - 8:30 am | Breakfast |
| 9:00 am - 12:30 pm | How Late/Early Could the Most Recent Common Ancestor Have Lived? Fossil, Molecular and Geological Evidence |
| Discussion Leader: Stephen J. Mojzsis (University of Colorado, Boulder) |
| 9:00 am - 10:00 am | Christopher H. House (Pennsylvania State University)
"What do gene sequences say about the antiquity of life?" |
| 10:00 am | Coffee Break |
| 10:30 am - 11:30 am | Roger E. Summons (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
"Molecular signatures of Late Archean biota" |
| 11:30 am - 12:30 pm | Mark A. van Zuilen (Scripps Inst. Ocean./CRPG-Nancy)
"Tracing life in the earliest terrestrial rock record" |
| 12:30 pm | Lunch |
| 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm | Free Time |
| 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm | General Poster Session |
| 6:00 pm | Dinner |
| 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm | Weird Life - Possible Alternative Chemistries for Extraterrestrial Life |
| Discussion Leader: James P. Ferris (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) |
| 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm | Steven A. Benner (Univ. of Florida)
"Beyond speculation. Synthetic organic chemistry to constrain universal biosignatures and models for the origin of life" |
| 8:30 pm - 9:30 pm | Art Weber (SETI Institute)
"Life at the Bottom of an Evolutionary Biogenesis" |
| TUESDAY |
| 7:30 am - 8:30 am | Breakfast |
| 9:00 am - 12:30 pm | The Early Atmosphere and Early Archean Environments on Earth |
| Discussion Leader: Bruce Runnegar (NASA Astrobiology Institute, Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California) |
| 9:00 am - 10:00 am | Gary Byerly (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge)
"Large meteor impacts on early Earth" |
| 10:00 am | Coffee Break |
| 10:30 am - 11:30 am | James Farquhar (Univ. of Maryland)
"Multiple Sulfur Isotope analyses: Applications for the study of the Earth's early atmosphere, early life, and early environments" |
| 11:30 am - 12:30 pm | Alex Pavlov (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder)
"Hazy Archean atmosphere. Impact of organic and sulfur aerosols on the Archean environment" |
| 12:30 pm | Lunch |
| 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm | Free Time |
| 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm | Poster Session and Discussions on "What organisms were the founding contributors to the eukaryotic cell and what are the early branching eukaryotes?"
Intro: Blair Heges (PSU) |
| 6:00 pm | Dinner |
| 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm | ORIGIN AND AMPLIFICATION OF BIOMOLECULAR CHIRALITY |
| Discussion Leader: Sandra Pizzarello (Arizona State Univ.) |
| 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm | Kenso Soai (Tokyo University of Science)
"Asymmetric Autocatalysis and The Origins of Chirality" |
| 8:30 pm - 9:30 pm | Dilip K. Kondepudi (Wake Forest University)
"Origin of Biomolecular Asymmetry: What do Theory and Experiments Tell Us?" |
| WEDNESDAY |
| 7:30 am - 8:30 am | Breakfast |
| 9:00 am - 12:30 pm | EXTENT OF LATERAL GENE TRANSFER IN EARLY EVOLUTION |
| Discussion Leader: Janet L. Siefert (Rice Univ.) |
| 9:00 am - 10:00 am | Antonio Lazcano (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
"The search for the last common ancestor: past imperfect?" |
| 10:00 am | Coffee Break |
| 10:30 am - 11:30 am | W. Ford Doolittle (Dalhousie University, Halifax)
"If a Phylogenetic Tree Falls in the Fores ..." |
| 11:30 am - 12:30 pm | Gary Olsen (University of Illinois)
"A Tree in the Jungle of Gene Histories: or, Don't Trip on the Vines" |
| 12:30 pm | Lunch |
| 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm | Free Time |
| 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm | Poster Session and Discussions on "Can we determine the topology and the root of the tree of life in the presence of horizontal gene transfer?"
Intro: Jim Lake (UCLA) |
| 6:00 pm | Dinner |
| 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm | SOLAR AND EXTRASOLAR PLANETS |
| Discussion Leader: Bruce M. Jakosky (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) |
| 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm | Jack L. Beauchamp (California Institute of Technology)
"Exploratory Studies Related to the Origin and Detection of Life in the Environments of Solar and Extrasolar Planets" |
| 8:30 pm - 9:30 pm | Paul Butler (Carnegie Institution of Washington)
"The Near Term Future of Extrasolar Planet" |
| THURSDAY |
| 7:30 am - 8:30 am | Breakfast |
| 9:00 am - 12:30 pm | SEQUENCE EVOLUTION IN THE RNA WORLD AND BEYOND |
| Discussion Leader: Donald H. Burke (Indiana Univ.) |
| 9:00 am - 10:00 am | Jack W. Szostak (Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School)
"TBA (RNA in vitro evolution, RNA based RNA polymerase, linking RNA and protein evolution in vitro)" |
| 10:00 am | Coffee Break |
| 10:30 am - 11:30 am | Peter Schuster (Universitãt Wien, Austria)
"From RNA sequences to structures and beyond -- evolution in an RNA model" |
| 11:30 am - 12:30 pm | Eugene Koonin (National Center for Biotechnology Information, NLM, NIH)
"Protein evolution prior to the Last Common Ancestor" |
| 12:30 pm | Lunch |
| 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm | Free Time |
| 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm | Poster Session and Discussions with Focus on Prebiotic Chemistry |
| 6:00 pm | Dinner |
| 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm | Thursday Evening Lecture |
| 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm | Louis Lerman (Pteranodon Ventures and Philipps University, Marburg, FRG)
“The Primordial Bubble: Symmetry Breaking and the Origin of Structure” |
| 8.30 pm - 9.30 pm | Business Meeting - open to all registered participants |
| FRIDAY |
| 7:30 am - 8:30 am | Breakfast |
| 9:00 am | Depart |
