INVESTIGADORES
MAUAS Pablo Jacobo David
artículos
Título:
Microbial Fuel Cells Applied to the Metabolically Based Detection of Extraterrestrial Life
Autor/es:
ABREVAYA, X. C.; MAUAS, P.J.D.; CORTÓN, E.
Revista:
ASTROBIOLOGY
Editorial:
MARY ANN LIEBERT INC
Referencias:
Año: 2010 vol. 10 p. 965 - 971
ISSN:
1531-1074
Resumen:
Since the 1970s, when the Viking spacecrafts carried out experiments to detect
microbial metabolism on the surface of Mars, the search for nonspecific
methods to detect life in situ has been one of the goals of
astrobiology. It is usually required that a methodology detect life
independently from its composition or form and that the chosen biological
signature point to a feature common to all living systems, such as the presence
of metabolism.
In this paper, we evaluate the use of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) for the
detection of microbial life in situ. MFCs are electrochemical
devices originally developed as power electrical sources and can be described
as fuel cells in which the anode is submerged in a medium that contains
microorganisms. These microorganisms, as part of their metabolic process,
oxidize organic material, releasing electrons that contribute to the electric
current, which is therefore proportional to metabolic and other redox
processes.
We show that power and current density values measured in MFCs that use
microorganism cultures or soil samples in the anode are much larger than those
obtained with a medium free of microorganisms or sterilized soil samples,
respectively. In particular, we found that this is true for extremophiles,
which have been proposed as potential inhabitants of extraterrestrial
environments. Therefore, our results show that MFCs have the potential to be
used for in situ detection of microbial life.