Publication Type Journal Article
Title Contamination analysis of Arctic ice samples as planetary field analogs and implications for future life-detection missions to Europa and Enceladus
Authors Ligia Patricia Fonseca Coelho Marie-Amelie Blais Alex Matveev Tina Keller-Costa Warwick F. Vincent Rodrigo Costa Zita Martins João Canário
Groups Chem4Env
Journal SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Year 2022
Month
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Volume 12
Number 1
Pages
Abstract Missions to detect extraterrestrial life are being designed to visit Europa and Enceladus in the next decades. The contact between the mission payload and the habitable subsurface of these satellites involves significant risk of forward contamination. The standardization of protocols to decontaminate ice cores from planetary field analogs of icy moons, and monitor the contamination in downstream analysis, has a direct application for developing clean approaches crucial to life detection missions in these satellites. Here we developed a comprehensive protocol that can be used to monitor and minimize the contamination of Arctic ice cores in processing and downstream analysis. We physically removed the exterior layers of ice cores to minimize bioburden from sampling. To monitor contamination, we constructed artificial controls and applied culture-dependent and culture-independent techniques such as 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. We identified 13 bacterial contaminants, including a radioresistant species. This protocol decreases the contamination risk, provides quantitative and qualitative information about contamination agents, and allows validation of the results obtained. This study highlights the importance of decreasing and evaluating prokaryotic contamination in the processing of polar ice cores, including in their use as analogs of Europa and Enceladus.
DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-16370-5
ISBN
Publisher NATURE PORTFOLIO
Book Title
ISSN 2045-2322
EISSN
Conference Name
Bibtex ID WOS:000831887000032
Observations
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