Detecting life by behavior, the overlooked sensitivity of behavioral assays.

ABSTRACT: Detecting life has driven research and exploration for centuries, but recent attempts to compile and generate a framework that summarizes life features, aimed to develop strategies for life detection missions beyond planet Earth, have disregarded a key life feature: behavior. Yet, some behaviors such as biomineralization or motility have occasionally been proposed as biosignatures to detect life. Here, we capitalize on a specific taxis' motility behavior, magnetotaxis, to experimentally provide insights in support of behavior as an unambiguous, sensitive biosignature, and magnetic forces as a prescreening option. Using a magnetotactic bacterial species, Magnetospirillum magneticum, we conducted a lab sensitivity experiment comparing PCR with the hanging drop behavioral assay, using a dilut

SUBMITTER: Zinßmeister D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11324786 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature