Terbium bead and spore viability assay

Synopsis: Studying contamination vectors and germination rates of water/soil samples within the cave.
Institution (PI): Adrian Ponce, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Responsible on-site: Aaron Noell

Description

Our instrument is able to detect the long lifetime luminescence from both Terbium (Tb) microbeads and from the chemical complex of Tebrium with dipicolinic acid (DPA), a bacterial spore specific marker. The instrument is composed of UV LEDs as an excitation light source, a time gated CCD camera for elimination of interfering short lifetime fluorescence, and an automated stage for multiple sample processing.

We will remotely instruct suit testers, who have had Tb microbeads applied to their suits, on where to sample in the cave. Ice samples will be filtered on site or in a nearby lab. The preserved filters will then be returned to our lab at the Jet Propulsion laboratory for both spore and bead analysis. Bead analysis will reveal to what extent the suit testers may have contaminated the samples, and the spore analysis will probe the microbiology of the cave.

Experiment Data