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Mars is poisonous to bacteria

04.07.2017

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh have found that the substances contained in the Martian soil, when exposed to ultraviolet light, are detrimental to bacteria. This means that terrestrial microbes, accidentally hitting Mars on spacecraft, will not be able to survive.

In 2008, NASA's Phoenix lander landed on Mars, which discovered perchlorates in the soil - perchloric acid salts that dissolve precious metals. Perchlorates, like perchloric acid, have very strong oxidizing properties, and scientists were interested because they could become an electron acceptor necessary for life processes in cells and, thus, a source of energy for living organisms, such as bacteria.

To find out how terrestrial bacteria would feel on perchlorates, scientists created a simulation of Martian conditions in the laboratory. They added potassium perchlorate, typical of Martian soil, to a breeding ground for the bacteria Bacillus subtilis, typical microbes that often inhabit spacecraft. This medium was then irradiated with ultraviolet light. The perchlorate concentration and wavelength were the kind that bacteria would encounter if they were on Mars.

As a result, all bacteria died after 30 seconds. The control sample, which was irradiated, but without the presence of perchlorate, lasted twice as long, and bacteria that lived on perchlorate without irradiation did not die at all.

Scientists tried to repeat the experiment with different conditions: they placed bacteria in a liquid medium to simulate the salt solutions that flow on Mars; created a microanalog of soil for microbes by placing microbes on plates coated with silica; they added other components that are present in regolith - hematite and hydrogen peroxide, but the result for bacilli was always lethal.

According to scientists, such toxicity of perchlorates is explained by the fact that, under the influence of ultraviolet radiation, they emit reactive oxygen species that are toxic to living organisms. According to scientists, the surface of Mars is completely unsuitable for the life of microorganisms, which means that you can not be afraid of the accidental introduction of terrestrial microbes to the red planet.

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Scientists from the University of Ghent have discovered a technology for recording small amounts of information, such as a bit of text or a QR code, onto grains of powder.

Specialists have developed a chemical process by which they were able to translate information into a chemical signature on a macromolecule with a certain sequence, that is, a molecule with a certain chain length and known subgroups. The researchers then developed two computer algorithms. One fully automates the process of converting information into a chemical form and vice versa. The other is responsible for making this process happen quickly. It's all about the amide-urethane oligomers on which information is recorded, and the operation of the algorithms is based on the techniques of tandem mass spectrometry.

The programs are called Chemcoder (it encodes and decodes information) and Chemreader (it automates the process of chemical writing and reading).

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