BiOMAS: Biochip for Organic Matter Analysis in Space

The search for the first steps of a prebiotic chemistry and the detection of life in the Solar System are ones of the great challenges of new upcoming space missions. In particular, some instruments will be designed to detect traces of organic matter on extra-terrestrial objects like Mars, Titan, comets, etc. A new and promising technique based on biochips is recommended by space agencies (ESA and NASA). A biochip is a miniaturized device composed of biological sensitive systems grafted on a slide. It allows the quantification of numerous target molecules simultaneously (from hundreds to thousands). With the support of the French space agency (CNES), our team currently develops a biochip especially designed for planetary exploration. The BiOMAS (Biochip for Organic Matter Analysis in Space) project, in progress for four years, has an interdisciplinary dimension bringing together specialists evolving in different area (planetology, physics, chemistry, biology and materials science) and developing complementary competences. A space biochip should be highly sensitive, specific and robust, allowing the detection of traces of various organic molecules (individuals and families). Since the conception of the biochip is at the heart of the instrumental specification, our aim is to optimize all the components (including the slide material, the ligands, the chemical bonds and the detection system) in order to meet both analytical and space constraints. Two different types of ligands (antibodies and aptamers) are under study to reach this objective. In space conditions, a lot of constraints might alter the efficiency of this analytical tool (irradiation by cosmic rays, temperature variations, vacuum, long duration mission, etc). Therefore, designing such a biochip requires testing the resistance of all its components to space conditions. Main concepts and current developments of the project are presented