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TRACES OF POSSIBLE ANCIENT LIFE FROM MARS

TO EARTH: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE MICROBIAL
ECOLOGY OF SALDA LAKE AND ITS PROTECTION

Orhan İNCE - H. Abdullah UÇAN et al.

ABSTRACT
Salda Lake, located in the northwest of Yeşilova district in Burdur province
in Turkey, is a unique lake on Earth that has geological, geochemical, and
mineralogical similarities with the ancient lake environment consistent
with the evidence indicating it has existed in National Aeronautics Space
Administration’s (NASA) Mars 2020 mission Perseverance Rover target area
Jezero Crater (Garczynski et al., 2020). Microbialites, present in Salda Lake,
are the current representatives of fossils (3.5 billion years) containing the
oldest life forms known on Earth (Balci et al., 2018). These rare microbial
structures are the archives that record the physical, chemical, biological, and
environmental characteristics of the environment in which they are found (Balci
et al., 2018). Scientific research and development studies to be carried out to
reveal the formation conditions and mechanisms of Salda Lake microbialites
and to reveal the fossil records of similar geologic environments will produce
significant data that can be usable and comparable not only on the origin and
evolution of life on Earth but also during the search for traces of possible past
life in the ancient lake environment in Jezero Crater on Mars (İnce et al., 2021).
In this context, according to the metabarcoding results of molecular-based
analyses of the project “ Research and Development Project for Determination
of the Microbial Ecology of Salda Lake with Advanced Molecular Methods
(Metabarcoding) and Mapping its Geomicrobiological Characteristics “ which
is supported by Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and

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