'Chemical Laptop' Could Search for Signs of Life Outside Earth

Researchers took the Chemical Laptop to JPL's Mars Yard, where they placed the device on a test rover. This image shows the size comparison between the Chemical Laptop and a regular laptop.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

If you were looking for the signatures of life on another world, you would want to take something small and portable with you. That's the philosophy behind the "Chemical Laptop" being developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California: a miniaturized laboratory that analyzes samples for materials associated with life.

"If this instrument were to be sent to space, it would be the most sensitive device of its kind to leave Earth, and the first to be able to look for both amino acids and fatty acids," said Jessica Creamer, a NASA postdoctoral fellow based at JPL.

Like a tricorder from "Star Trek," the Chemical Laptop is a miniaturized on-the-go laboratory, which researchers hope to send one day to another planetary body such as Mars or Europa. It is roughly the size of a regular computing laptop, but much thicker to make room for chemical analysis components inside. But unlike a tricorder, it has to ingest a sample to analyze it. 

"Our device is a chemical analyzer that can be reprogrammed like a laptop to perform different functions," said Fernanda Mora, a JPL technologist who is developing the instrument with JPL's Peter Willis, the project's principal investigator. "As on a regular laptop, we have different apps for different analyses like amino acids and fatty acids."

Amino acids are building blocks of proteins, while fatty acids are key components of cell membranes. Both are essential to life, but can also be found in non-life sources. The Chemical Laptop may be able to tell the difference.

JPL researchers Jessica Creamer, Fernanda Mora and Peter Willis (left to right) pose with the Chemical Laptop, a device designed to detect amino acids and fatty acids. At left is a near-identical copy of the Curiosity rover, which has been on Mars since 2012. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

What it's looking for

Amino acids come in two types: Left-handed and right-handed. Like the left and right hands of a person, these amino acids are mirror images of each other but contain the same components. Some scientists hypothesize that life on Earth evolved to use just left-handed amino acids because that standard was adopted early in life's history, sort of like the way VHS became the standard for video instead of Betamax in the 1980s. It's possible that life on other worlds might use the right-handed kind. 

"If a test found a 50-50 mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids, we could conclude that the sample was probably not of biological origin," Creamer said. "But if we were to find an excess of either left or right, that would be the golden ticket. That would be the best evidence so far that life exists on other planets."

The analysis of amino acids is particularly challenging because the left- and right-handed versions are equal in size and electric charge. Even more challenging is developing a method that can look for all the amino acids in a single analysis.

When the laptop is set to look for fatty acids, scientists are most interested in the length of the acids' carbon chain. This is an indication of what organisms are or were present.

How it works

The battery-powered Chemical Laptop needs a liquid sample to analyze, which is more difficult to obtain on a planetary body such as Mars. The group collaborated with JPL's Luther Beegle to incorporate an "espresso machine" technology, in which the sample is put into a tube with liquid water and heated to above 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius). The water then comes out carrying the organic molecules with it. The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Mars Curiosity rover utilizes a similar principle, but it uses heat without water.

Once the water sample is fed into the Chemical Laptop, the device prepares the sample by mixing it with a fluorescent dye, which attaches the dye to the amino acids or fatty acids. The sample then flows into a microchip inside the device, where the amino acids or fatty acids can be separated from one another. At the end of the separation channel is a detection laser. The dye allows researchers see a signal corresponding to the amino acids or fatty acids when they pass the laser.

Inside a "separation channel" of the microchip, there are already chemical additives that mix with the sample. Some of these species will only interact with right-handed amino acids, and some will only interact with the left-handed variety. These additives will change the relative amount of time the left and right-handed amino acids are in the separation channel, allowing scientists to determine the "handedness" of amino acids in the sample.

The Chemical Laptop, developed at JPL, analyzes liquid samples and detects amino acids and fatty acids. These are both chemicals that are essential to life.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Testing for future uses

Last year the researchers did a field test at JPL's Mars Yard, where they placed the Chemical Laptop on a test rover.

"This was the first time we showed the instrument works outside of the laboratory setting. This is the first step toward demonstrating a totally portable and automated instrument that can operate in the field," said Mora.

For this test, the laptop analyzed a sample of "green rust," a mineral that absorbs organic molecules in its layers and may be significant in the origin of life, said JPL's Michael Russell, who helped provide the sample.

"One ultimate goal is to put a detector like this on a spacecraft such as a Mars rover, so for our first test outside the lab we literally did that," said Willis.

Since then, Mora has been working to improve the sensitivity of the Chemical Laptop so it can detect even smaller amounts of amino acids or fatty acids. Currently, the instrument can detect concentrations as low as parts per trillion. Mora is currently testing a new laser and detector technology.

Coming up is a test in the Atacama Desert in Chile, with collaboration from NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, through a grant from NASA's Planetary Science & Technology Through Analog Research (PSTAR) program.

"This could also be an especially useful tool for icy-worlds targets such as Enceladus and Europa. All you would need to do is melt a little bit of the ice, and you could sample it and analyze it directly," Creamer said.

The Chemical Laptop technology has applications for Earth, too. It could be used for environmental monitoring -- analyzing samples directly in the field, rather than taking them back to a laboratory. Uses for medicine could include testing whether the contents of drugs are legitimate or counterfeit. 

Creamer recently won an award for her work in this area at JPL's Postdoc Research Day Poster Session.

NASA's PICASSO program, part of the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, supported this research. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

ORIGINAL: NASA

By Elizabeth Landau. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Nov. 16, 2015

Last Updated: Nov. 16, 2015

818-354-6425

Elizabeth.Landau@jpl.nasa.gov

Editor: Martin Perez

One of the Most Important Tools in Science Now Fits Inside Your Phone

A spectrometer that fits in your mobile devices could let you scan yourself for skin cancer.

Illustration by Mary O'Reilly

We use them to spy on exoplanets, diagnose skin-cancer, and ID the makeup of unknown chemicals. They're on NASA spacecraft flying around Saturn's moons right now. Yes, right alongside the microscope, the optical spectrometer—an instrument that breaks down the light that something reflects or emits, telling you what its made of—is one of the most ubiquitous tools in all of science. Today, Jie Bao, a physicist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, has just discovered a fascinating way to make them smaller, lighter, and less expensive than we ever thought possible.

By using tiny amounts of strange, light-sensitive inks, Bao and his colleague Moungi Bawendi—a chemist at MIT—have designed a working spectrometer that's small enough to fit on your smartphone. Because of the tool's simple design and its need for only an incredibly small amount of the inks, Bao says, his spectrometer only requires a few dollars worth of materials to make. They report the research today in the journal Nature.

"THAT'S WHAT I'M REALLY HOPING FOR, SEEING THEM IN CELLPHONES IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE."

"Of course we still have a lot of room for improvement. But performance-wise, even at this preliminary stage, our spectrometer works very close to what's currently being sold in the market," Bao says. "I think that's one of the most attractive results of our research: [This spectrometer] is already so close to a real product."

Printable Detectors

The way spectrometers work goes back to the 17th century, when Issac Newton showed that a prism could break up white light into distinct bars (technically wavelengths) of different colored light. Depending on the source of the light—say, a candle or the sun—that rainbow spectrum would change. Today, we know this happens because the atomic or molecular makeup of everything that either gives off or reflects light leaves an indelible fingerprint. And if you understand which materials leave which fingerprints, you can use light alone to find out what something is made of.

Bao says most modern spectrometers are made in more or less the same way. They diffract incoming light, then push it through a mechanically movable slit to see which exactly which wavelengths of light fit through which slits. This setup, because it involves complex moving pieces, is a total pain to shrink down in size. It's expensive, too, because accurate spectrometers require high-precision components and delicate alignment.

Jie Bao

But Bao's spectrometer works in a much simpler way. As if making micro-sized stained glass windows, Bao prints a tiny grid of 195 different-colored liquid inks directly onto a flat sensor. (That sensor, called a CCD sensor, is what your phone's camera uses to pick up light.) Each of the 195 windows is made of a material called colloidal quantum dots, and each "absorbs certain wavelengths of light, and lets others go," says Bao. When light hits each window and travels through, the underlying sensor records how the light changed. Later, a computer can compare the data from all of the windows and reconstruct what wavelengths made up the original light.

Cellphone Spectrometers

Right now, Bao's spectrometer is about the size of a quarter, and he says the underlying CCD sensors he uses can be bought online for less than a dollar a pop. Because he's using just a tiny drop of each of the colloidal quantum dot inks (which have only recently been developed) the cost all 195 drops is only on the order of a few dollars.

"THE PEOPLE WHO ARE PLANNING SPACE MISSIONS ARE WEIGHING EVERY GRAM."

Because spectrometers are so widely used in science, Bao sees a rainbow of possible uses for his new device. For one, he says, his spectrometers could be easily integrated into commercial smartwatches and phones, allowing everyday people to do things like self-identify skin cancer. "That's what I'm really hoping for, seeing them in cellphones in the very near future," he says.

And because spectrometers are so widely used on exploratory spacecraft, Bao sees an easier and far cheaper way to deck out the next generation of space explorers. "The people who are planning space missions are pretty much weighing every gram, and so this would be a very easy way to lose weight."

ORIGINAL: Popular Mechanics

By William Herkewitz

Jul 1, 2015 

Scientists have built artificial neurons that fully mimic human brain cells

They could supplement our brain function.

Researchers have built the world’s first artificial neuron that’s capable of mimicking the function of an organic brain cell - including the ability to translate chemical signals into electrical impulses, and communicate with other human cells.

These artificial neurons are the size of a fingertip and contain no ‘living’ parts, but the team is working on shrinking them down so they can be implanted into humans. This could allow us to effectively replace damaged nerve cells and develop new treatments for neurological disorders, such as spinal cord injuries and Parkinson’s disease.

Professor Agneta Richter Dahlfors. 

Foto: Stefan Zimmerman

"Our artificial neuron is made of conductive polymers and it functions like a human neuron," lead researcher Agneta Richter-Dahlfors from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden said in a press release.

Until now, scientists have only been able to stimulate brain cells using electrical impulses, which is how they transmit information within the cells. But in our bodies they're stimulated by chemical signals, and this is how they communicate with other neurons.

By connecting enzyme-based biosensors to organic electronic ion pumps, Richter-Dahlfors and her team have now managed to create an artificial neuron that can mimic this function, and they've shown that it can communicate chemically with organic brain cells even over large distances.

"The sensing component of the artificial neuron senses a change in chemical signals in one dish, and translates this into an electrical signal," said Richter-Dahlfors. "This electrical signal is next translated into the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in a second dish, whose effect on living human cells can be monitored."

This means that artificial neurons could theoretically be integrated into complex biological systems, such as our bodies, and could allow scientists to replace or bypass damaged nerve cells. So imagine being able to use the device to restore function to paralysed patients, or heal brain damage.

"Next, we would like to miniaturise this device to enable implantation into the human body," said Richer-Dahlfors.“We foresee that in the future, by adding the concept of wireless communication, the biosensor could be placed in one part of the body, and trigger release of neurotransmitters at distant locations."

"Using such auto-regulated sensing and delivery, or possibly a remote control, new and exciting opportunities for future research and treatment of neurological disorders can be envisaged," she added.

The results of lab trials have been published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

We're really looking forward to seeing where this research goes. While the potential for treating neurological disorders are incredibly exciting, the artificial neurons could one day also help us to supplement our mental abilities and add extra memory storage or offer faster processing, and that opens up some pretty awesome possibilities.

ORIGINAL: Science Alert

By FIONA MACDONALD

29 JUN 2015