Abstract
A new nanobiotechnological approach for the detection of extraterrestrial Earth-like biological forms is proposed. The approach is based on the ability of microbial cells to reduce artificially added cations with the generation of crystalline nanoparticles (NPs) from zero-valent atoms. The method is named DBNG (Detection of Biogenic Nanoparticles Generation). The subglacial low-temperature oligotrophic Lake Untersee in Antarctica was used as a model of putative extraterrestrial water environments inhabited by Earth-like type microorganisms. The DBNG protocol for the comparative study of microbial communities of low-temperature oligotrophic environments was optimized on the base of experiments with the pure culture of psychroactive bacterium Cryobacterium sp. 1639 isolated earlier from Lake Untersee. The formation of silver nanoparticles (Ag°NPs) has been conducted in natural water samples of three horizons at low temperature (+5°C), which was in the temperature range registered in the Lake Untersee. The generation of biogenic Ag°NPs was detected only at the presence of indigenous microorganisms in all studied samples. No Ag°NPs generation was observed in the lake water samples artificially free of cells or exposed to pasteurization (two types of controls). The miniature microfluidic chip for an automated version of the device, based on using different analytical methods for recording in situ-formed biogenic nanoparticles, is proposed. The device allows the detection of the biological objects directly at the sampling site.
Highlights
Nowadays, the topical challenge of astrobiology is the development and testing of new methods for searching for Earth-like biological forms in Space
When the temperature was higher than 20◦C, the growth of psychroactive bacterium Cryobacterium sp. 1639 was very slow, and the formation of Ag◦NPs was not detected (Figure 3C)
To adapt the Detection of the Biogenic Nanoparticles Generation (DBNG) method for the detection of microorganisms in low-temperature water environments, we used the results of experiments with a pure culture of psychroactive bacteria isolated from the 72 m horizon of the Lake Untersee
Summary
The topical challenge of astrobiology is the development and testing of new methods for searching for Earth-like biological forms in Space. It is assumed that metabolically active microorganisms are present mainly in a state of aqueous suspensions in terrestrial environments. Many cells of such suspensions can remain viable for a very long time, especially in oligotrophic environments (Gordon et al, 2000; Vishnivetskaya et al, 2000; Ponder et al, 2008). Searching for extraterrestrial biosignatures or biological Earth-like objects in most studies is focused. We propose a novel nanobiotechnological approach for the detection of microbiological objects in water or melted ice samples from extraterrestrial low-temperature environments. The approach is named the Detection of the Biogenic Nanoparticles Generation (DBNG), and it based on the ability of microorganisms, in particular bacteria, to produce biogenic crystalline nanoparticles of reduced Ag◦ atoms of the artificially added silver salt solution
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