European Space Agency
European Mars Science and Exploration Conference: Mars Express & ExoMars
ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, 12 - 16 November, 2007
BIOSIGNATURES OF ANTICIPATED LIFE ON MARS AND THEIR DETECTION BY MSL AND
EXOMARS Joop M. Houtkooper1, Dirk Schulze-Makuch2. 1Center for Psychobiology and Behavioral Medicine,
Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, De Maalkom 7, 1191LP Ouderkerk Amstel, The Netherlands. 2School of
Earth and Environmental Sciences, Washington State University, USA. joophoutkooper@gmail.com
Anticipated Life on Mars: The hydrogen peroxide-
water hypothesis [1] offers an explanation for the
hitherto puzzling aspects of the Viking Lander
biology experiments. The lack of detected organics in
the GCMS and the evolution of oxygen in the GEx
experiment point to the possibility of organisms using
a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water in their
intracellular fluid.
H2O2-H2O mixtures: Such mixtures have several
properties attractive in Martian ambient conditions:
The freezing point of the eutectic is -56.5oC, with the
tendency to supercool below that temperature, H2O2
is a source of oxygen and energy, and the mixture is
hygroscopic, enabling organisms to attract water
vapor from the atmosphere well below saturated
conditions.
The compatibility of H2O2 with biochemistry may
be questioned, but even terran biochemistry has a
number of uses for H2O2, as a messenger molecule, as
a defence by antibodies, in the metabolism of
Acetobacter peroxidans, with the most extreme
example known being the 25% H2O2 solution
produced by the insect Brachinus crepitans.
Properties of the anticipated organisms: First, the
organisms are well able to grow without liquid water
at Martian ambient temperatures. Furthermore they
may well have an excess oxidative content and their
ability to scavenge water vapor from the atmosphere
may also be a disadvantage: Under water vapor rich
conditions, such as saturation at above zero
temperatures, they may have no defence against
hyperhydration. Obviously, the organisms have to
produce their H2O2 from the atmosphere, of which
the H2O2 content is in the ppb range. Moreover, the
contact between the H2O2 and the proteins in the cell
may require an active stabilization mechanism,
possibly in conjuction with the H2O2 production. The
active stabilization mechanism may be similar in
some way to the damage repair mechanism in Deino-
coccus radiodurans, which requires an active
metabolic state.
Explaining the Viking results: The lack of
detected organics can be explained by the gradual
heating to pyrolysis, by which the organisms
decomposed into CO2, H2O, O2, N2 and little else. In
the GEx experiment, the added moisture caused the
organisms to hyperhydrate and perish as well. The
excess oxidative content of organisms explains the
evolved O2. Moreover, the presence of organisms
may explain the diminished reponses in the "cold
sterilization" tests and the lack of response of samples
stored for 3 months in the dark at above zero
temperatures, possibly because of energy use by
active cellular stabilization.
The MSL and ExoMars instruments: MSL and
ExoMars may reveal indicators of biology. The MSL
will have the SAM searching for carbon compounds,
both in soil samples and in the atmosphere. The soil
samples will be heated to get the GCMS to work. A
laser spectrometer will analyze isotopic abundances.
Environmental monitoring will measure humidity.
ExoMars will carry GEP to monitor the environment
for a few Martian years. The Pasteur package on the
rover will contain a GCMS and a microscopic
spectrometer. Organics and oxidants should be
detected and an antibody-based life-marker chip may
detect present life if a biochemistry similar to ours is
involved.
Adding water is no option: Most biology
experiments use liquid water. The resulting com-
bination of humidity and temperature is unmartian
and may cause the anticipated organisms to perish.
The same may well have happened when heating the
samples in the Viking GCMS. This limits the pos-
sibilities of detection. Still, imaging and microscopic
spectroscopy, in the visual and UV to detect
absorbing/photosynthetic pigments, and in the IR to
possibly detect a Raman signature of H2O2 are
possibilities. However, metabolism should not be
neglected: Organisms which produce H2O2 from H2O
and CO2 using photosynthesis or thermal gradients
have to produce reducing species such as CO, CH4
and CH2O. Scavenging O2 from the little present in
the atmosphere is another possibility. These
metabolic processes may result in signatures in the
surface boundary layer of the atmosphere in the form
of diurnal rhythms. Monitoring of the atmospheric
(isotopic) composition with high precision would be
called for.
References: [1] Houtkooper, J. M., and D. Schulze-
Makuch, (2007) IJA 6: 147-152.
doi:10.1017/S1473550407003746.