Astrobiological Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Sensors

Details Astrobiological Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Sensors Astrobiological Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Sensors

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufm.p51d0963i&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #P51D-0963

Biology

0452 Instruments And Techniques, 5200 Planetary Sciences: Astrobiology, 5494 Instruments And Techniques, 6094 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

Development of Molecularly Imprinted Polymer (MIP) sensors for astrobiology is intended to provide a new class of microlaboratory sensors compatible with other life or biomarker detection. Molecular imprinting is a process for making selective binding sites in synthetic polymers. The process may be approached by designing the recognition site or by simply choosing monomers that may have favorable interactions with the imprinting molecule. We are working to apply this methodology to astrobiology for development of a reliable, low cost, low mass, low power consumption sensor technology for quantitative in-situ analysis of biochemistry, biomarkers, and other indicators of astrobiological importance. Specific goals of the project are: 1) To develop a general methodology and specific methods for MIP-based sensor construction. The overall methodology will guide procedures for design and testing of any desired sensor. Specific methods will be applied to key families and specific species of astrobiological interest, i.e., alkanes (and Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons - PAHs), amino acids, steroids, and hopanes; 2) To construct and characterize the general family and specific species sensors. We will test for accuracy, precision, interferences, and limitations of the sensor against blanks, standards, and known terrestrial biological environment samples. Additional testing will determine sturdiness and longevity of sensors after exposure to transit conditions (launch and space environment), and at potential target environments (pressure, temperature, pH, etc.); and 3) To construct and demonstrate the combination of multiple sensors into a viable prototype instrument, and roadmap the expansion of potential instrument capabilities and exploration of the ultimate environmental limitations of the technology, and the necessary changes and additions to create a mission-ready instrument. Initial work has resulted successful detection of aqueous alanine (D and L) with simple MIP sensors, and we will present results for other amino acid detector methodologies.

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