While life may exist beyond Earth, there is no telling what form it will take, or whether it will use the same “alphabet” of biomolecules as terrestrial life. One strategy to increase the chance of finding alien life is to look for patterns in the physical properties of the organic molecules within a sample. For example, looking at the distributions within the type, relative abundance, and chirality of amino acids can be used to distinguish between the presence of abiotic and biotic chemistry. Using this philosophy, the search for biosignatures on spaceflight missions will require in situ instrumentation capable of highly selective and sensitive organic analyses. To this end, capillary electrophoresis with laser induced fluorescence detection (CE-LIF) is a uniquely promising technique, capable of detecting organics, like amino acids, in complex samples with nanomolar limits of detection. Previously, a CE-LIF method was developed in our lab to simultaneously separate the 13 most astrobiologically relevant amino acids, including five chiral pairs. One perceived risk of sending a method like this on a spaceflight mission is the storage stability of the reagents needed to perform the assay, particularly after exposure to high temperatures and radiation.  Here we will discuss what we have done to address this concern and how our findings inform the design of any potential future flight hardware.<br/>

Detection of amino acid biosignatures using capillary electrophoresis

2019 Spring National Meeting

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