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Detecting Pyrolysis Products from Bacteria on MarsA pyrolysis/sublimation technique was developed to isolate volatile amine compounds from a Mars soil analogue inoculated with approx. 10 billion Escherichia coli cells. In this technique, the inoculated soil is heated to 500 C for several seconds at Martian ambient pressure and the sublimate, collected by a cold finger, then analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography. Methylamine and ethylamine, produced from glycine and alanine decarboxylation, were the most abundant amine compounds detected after pyrolysis of the cells. A heating cycle similar to that utilized in our experiment was also used to release organic compounds from the Martian soil in the 1976 Viking gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) pyrolysis experiment. The Viking GC/MS did not detect any organic compounds of Martian origin above a level of a few parts per billion in the Martian surface soil. Although the Viking GC/MS instruments were not specifically designed to search for the presence of living cells on Mars, our experimental results indicate that at the part per billion level, the degradation products generated from several million bacterial cells per gram of Martian soil would not have been detected.
Document ID
20030067922
Acquisition Source
Headquarters
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Glavin, Daniel
(California Univ., San Diego La Jolla, CA, United States)
Schubert, Michael
(California Univ., San Diego La Jolla, CA, United States)
Botta, Oliver
(California Univ., San Diego La Jolla, CA, United States)
Kminek, Gerhard
(California Univ., San Diego La Jolla, CA, United States)
Bada, Jeffrey L.
(California Univ., San Diego La Jolla, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 21, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2001
Publication Information
Publication: Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Publisher: Elsevier Science Publishers
Volume: 185
ISSN: 0012-821
Subject Category
Space Sciences (General)
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NAG5-4546
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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