Lab-on-a-chip Astrobiology Analyzer

The overall goal of this program (through Phase III) is to develop an astrobiology analyzer to measure chemical signatures of life in extraterrestrial settings. The analyzer will employ a lab-on-a-chip to extract biochemical signatures from soil or water samples and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to detect and identify the signatures. The goal of the Phase I program is to demonstrate feasibility by separating mixtures of amino acids in SER-active sol-gel capillary columns. This will be accomplished by developing new sol-gels that selectively extract the amino acids from flowing water, while at the same time providing SER activity to identify the amino acids, individually and as a class. The Phase II work will design, build and test the proposed prototype lab-on-a-chip analyzer. This will be accomplished by incorporating the sol-gel coated capillaries into a lab-on-a-chip, and performing chemical separation and Raman signal enhancement sufficiently to identify chemical signatures of life.