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Published October 2016 | Published
Journal Article Open

Microbial Morphology and Motility as Biosignatures for Outer Planet Missions

Abstract

Meaningful motion is an unambiguous biosignature, but because life in the Solar System is most likely to be microbial, the question is whether such motion may be detected effectively on the micrometer scale. Recent results on microbial motility in various Earth environments have provided insight into the physics and biology that determine whether and how microorganisms as small as bacteria and archaea swim, under which conditions, and at which speeds. These discoveries have not yet been reviewed in an astrobiological context. This paper discusses these findings in the context of Earth analog environments and environments expected to be encountered in the outer Solar System, particularly the jovian and saturnian moons. We also review the imaging technologies capable of recording motility of submicrometer-sized organisms and discuss how an instrument would interface with several types of sample-collection strategies.

Additional Information

© 2016 Jay Nadeau, et al.; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. Submitted 2 July 2015; Accepted 13 June 2016; Online Ahead of Print: August 23, 2016. This work was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, grants 4037 to McGill University and 4038 to the California Institute of Technology. J.W.D. also acknowledges support from the Walters Endowed Professorship. We thank Gordon Max Showalter for his contributions to laboratory and field testing of the DHM featured in Fig. 13 and Shelly Carpenter for the DAPI-stained image in Fig. 5 and assistance in the field. No competing financial interests exist.

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August 22, 2023
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