期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2015
卷号：112
期号：2
页码：378-381
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1415348112
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：SignificanceThe quest to find life in extreme and extraterrestrial environments is exciting and touches many research fields. One of the common signatures of life is movement: Even small microorganisms vibrate in response to their metabolic activity. Thus, we have devised a nanomotion detector to study these fluctuations and to associate them to the metabolic activity of the specimens. This technique does not measure the chemical response of life, which would require prior knowledge of the metabolic pathways involved. Instead, it monitors the physical manifestation of any kind of metabolic activity the microorganisms might have. Here, we show how this nanomotion detector can study any living system, paving the way to a complementary approach to the study of life in extreme environments. The existence of life in extreme conditions, in particular in extraterrestrial environments, is certainly one of the most intriguing scientific questions of our time. In this report, we demonstrate the use of an innovative nanoscale motion sensor in life-searching experiments in Earth-bound and interplanetary missions. This technique exploits the sensitivity of nanomechanical oscillators to transduce the small fluctuations that characterize living systems. The intensity of such movements is an indication of the viability of living specimens and conveys information related to their metabolic activity. Here, we show that the nanomotion detector can assess the viability of a vast range of biological specimens and that it could be the perfect complement to conventional chemical life-detection assays. Indeed, by combining chemical and dynamical measurements, we could achieve an unprecedented depth in the characterization of life in extreme and extraterrestrial environments.
关键词：nanomechanical sensors ; extraterrestrial life ; nanoscale fluctuations ; living specimens ; nanomotion detector
