[meteorite-list] U. North Carolina Technology Enrolled in Hunt for Life on Mars

[Ron Baalke]

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

News Services contact:
Patric Lane, (919) 962-8596

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

UNC technology enrolled in hunt for life on Mars

Scientists looking for evidence of life on Mars have turned to technology
invented by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers to help
with their mission.

A team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has
created a device for use on the European ExoMars rover mission scheduled for
launch in 2013. That space voyage is one of several planned expeditions to
the red planet that will follow in the footsteps of NASA's Phoenix mission,
which landed on Mars late last month and this week began preparing to test
soil samples.

The microfluidic or "lab-on-a-chip" device -- which takes its name from the
fact that the credit-card sized invention can perform multiple detailed
laboratory tests -- could be used to analyze Martian soil and rock for
traces of biological compounds such as amino acids, the building blocks of
proteins.

But until they turned to materials called perfluoropolyethers (PFPEs), which
were first pioneered for use in the field of microfluidics by Joseph
DeSimone, Ph.D., Chancellor's Eminent Professor of Chemistry and Chemical
Engineering and his colleagues in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences, the
NASA team was having trouble making a chip that could withstand the rigors
of the proposed mission.

Jason Rolland, Ph.D., who helped invent PFPE materials for microfluidic
devices when he was a graduate student in DeSimone's lab, said the tiny
apparatus handle very small volumes of liquids through tiny channels, and
are similar to microelectronic chips, but for fluids. The elastic nature of
PFPEs makes it possible to incorporate moving parts such as tiny valves into
the devices.

In a paper co-written by Rolland and published recently in the Royal Society
of Chemistry journal Lab on a Chip, the NASA team, led by Peter Willis,
Ph.D., said devices made using PFPE membranes sandwiched between layers of
glass were easier to make and greatly outperformed other materials such as
PDMS and PTFE, commercially known as Teflon.

The chips also held up to severe stress testing, surviving the equivalent of
1 million operations at temperatures ranging from 50 degrees Celsius to
minus 50 degrees Celsius virtually unscathed.

"It turned out that the material fit right into the sweet spot of what
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed to enable this device to work," said
Rolland, co-founder and director of research and development at Liquidia
Technologies, a company which licensed the PFPE technology from UNC.

"There are several reasons to suspect that amino acids and other biological
molecules could be found on the surface of Mars," Rolland said. "If this
device is able to confirm this, it would obviously be one of the most
important discoveries of all time. It's exciting to think that UNC and
Liquidia Technologies could be a part of that."

To see the study, go to:
     http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/LC/article.asp?doi=b804265a

For more information about Liquidia, go to
     http://www.liquidia.com

For information about NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, visit
     http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Note: Rolland can be reached at (919) 991-0835

IMAGE CAPTION:
[http://uncnews.unc.edu/images/stories/news/science/2008/exomars%20rover_esa.jpg
(2.6MB)]
The ExoMars rover (photo credit: European Space Agency)