beecee Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 https://phys.org/news/2022-01-chemist-extraterrestrial-life.html Have we been looking for extraterrestrials in all the wrong places? San Diego State University chemists are developing methods to find signs of life on other planets by looking for the building blocks of proteins in a place they've never been able to test before: inside rocks. After collaborating with researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge in 2019, Jessica Torres, a doctoral student studying chemistry at SDSU, is experimenting with ways to extract amino acids from porous rocks that could be used on future rovers. Previous research has looked for evidence of other life forms in water and soil, but not from solid materials. MORE AT LINK..................... Supplementary article: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-life-planets.html the paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.analchem.6b04338 Enhanced Resolution of Chiral Amino Acids with Capillary Electrophoresis for Biosignature Detection in Extraterrestrial Samples: Abstract Amino acids are fundamental building blocks of terrestrial life as well as ubiquitous byproducts of abiotic reactions. In order to distinguish between amino acids formed by abiotic versus biotic processes it is possible to use chemical distributions to identify patterns unique to life. This article describes two capillary electrophoresis methods capable of resolving 17 amino acids found in high abundance in both biotic and abiotic samples (seven enantiomer pairs d/l-Ala, -Asp, -Glu, -His, -Leu, -Ser, -Val and the three achiral amino acids Gly, β-Ala, and GABA). To resolve the 13 neutral amino acids one method utilizes a background electrolyte containing γ-cyclodextrin and sodium taurocholate micelles. The acidic amino acid enantiomers were resolved with γ-cyclodextrin alone. These methods allow detection limits down to 5 nM for the neutral amino acids and 500 nM for acidic amino acids and were used to analyze samples collected from Mono Lake with minimal sample preparation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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