Gram-negative Biomass in Clay Minerals Analogs: Testing Habitability Potential for the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory Mission

Details Gram-negative Biomass in Clay Minerals Analogs: Testing Habitability Potential for the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory Mission Gram-negative Biomass in Clay Minerals Analogs: Testing Habitability Potential for the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory Mission

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufm.p43c1444b&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #P43C-1444

Biology

[0406] Biogeosciences / Astrobiology And Extraterrestrial Materials, [0424] Biogeosciences / Biosignatures And Proxies, [3954] Mineral Physics / X-Ray, Neutron, And Electron Spectroscopy And Diffraction, [6225] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Mars

Scientific paper

Landing sites of next missions to Mars i.e., the US 2011 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL11) and the ESA2016 Pasteur ExoMars, will include phyllosilicate outcrops as targets for investigating the geological and biological history of that planet. In this context, we present a study assessing the living biomass and habitability potential in mineralogical Mars analogs such as phyllosilicates and hematite-rich deposits encompassing a broad arid-hyper-arid climate range (annual rainfall <0.2 to ~700mm/y). Samples from the Atacama Desert (Chile), the Death Valley (CA), and the California Coast (USA) were analyzed for microbial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) as proxy for Gram-negatives biomass with the Limulus-Amebocite-Lysate (LAL) assay. Mineral phases were identified using X-Ray-Diffraction (XRD). These samples resulted to contain phyllosilicate phases similar to those identified, or inferred [1], on the surface of Mars by the OMEGA-Mars/Express [e.g., 2], the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) instruments (HiRISE and CRISM) [3]. Basic observations were: 1) there is no systematic pattern in biomass content of clays vs. non-clays (oxidized) materials from the study sites; 2) Atacama desiccation polygons (muscovite and kaolinite) and contiguous hematite-rich hyper-arid deposits contain the lowest biomass, i.e., ~104to-105 cells/g, respectively; 3) the hyper-arid clays contain three-order magnitude lower Gram-negative biomass than those (montmorillonite, illite, and chlorite) from the arid Death Valley site (~107cells/g); and 4) finally, the Gram-negative (~107cells/g) of clay minerals-rich materials from the arid site is about the same than that (~1.5 to ~3.0 x 107cells/g) of water-saturated massive deposits (kaolinite, illite, and vermiculite) from the wetter California coast. Results from this investigation will help testing for the habitability potential of phyllosilicate deposits sampled by the MSL11 Mission. REFERENCES:[1] Bibring et al., 2006, Science 312:400-404; [2] Wang et al., 2006 JGR E02S16 Vol.111; [3] Bishop et al., 2008. Science, 321,830-833.

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