We are pursuing the question whether the Earth system is a biological system and if so, whether it has a genotype upon we could be able to determine its climate phenotypic changes (glaciations, global warming, cold-house, hot-house etc). The particular working question will put our hands on is: “do enzymes set climate parameters given a determined outer space condition?”
Understanding the Earth system as such involves knowledge of different fields and disciplines such as microbial molecular genetics, biogeochemistry, geology, planetary and space science, theoretical biology, dynamical system theory, Earth system science, bioinformatics, metagenomics, cognitive sciences, astrobiology and climatology.
This Q-Team course is a research-based learning course such that the research question is to be answered together during the course. We will offer the theoretical fundaments to connect and relate these different fields and disciplines with the aim to answer the question we are pursuing. That is, this is an opportunity for students perform their own independent research for a joint goal-oriented work. Basic knowledge of one of the fields above isrequired, yet, it is not necessary to know all of them. It is enough to know one of them and to have a strong interest to know how your field could connect with the rest to understand in a very innovative way the system we are living in: our living planet