{"id":172831,"date":"2023-09-26T06:23:04","date_gmt":"2023-09-26T11:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/a-robust-agnostic-molecular-biosignature-based-on-machine-learning"},"modified":"2023-09-26T06:23:04","modified_gmt":"2023-09-26T11:23:04","slug":"a-robust-agnostic-molecular-biosignature-based-on-machine-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/a-robust-agnostic-molecular-biosignature-based-on-machine-learning","title":{"rendered":"A robust, agnostic molecular biosignature based on machine learning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-robust-agnostic-molecular-biosignature-based-on-machine-learning2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The search for definitive biosignatures\u2014unambiguous markers of past or present life\u2014is a central goal of paleobiology and astrobiology. We used pyrolysis\u2013gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry to analyze chemically disparate samples, including living cells, geologically processed fossil organic material, carbon-rich meteorites, and laboratory-synthesized organic compounds and mixtures. Data from each sample were employed as training and test subsets for machine-learning methods, which resulted in a model that can identify the biogenicity of both contemporary and ancient geologically processed samples with ~90% accuracy. These machine-learning methods do not rely on precise compound identification: Rather, the relational aspects of chromatographic and mass peaks provide the needed information, which underscores this method\u2019s utility for detecting alien biology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The search for definitive biosignatures\u2014unambiguous markers of past or present life\u2014is a central goal of paleobiology and astrobiology. We used pyrolysis\u2013gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry to analyze chemically disparate samples, including living cells, geologically processed fossil organic material, carbon-rich meteorites, and laboratory-synthesized organic compounds and mixtures. Data from each sample were employed as training [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,19,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-chemistry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}