Supercritical Fluid Extraction and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Diode Array-Electrochemical Detection of Signature Redox Compounds from Sand and Soil Samples

✍ Scribed by Qingyong Lang; I.Francis Cheng; Chien M. Wai; Andrzej Paszczynski; Ronald L. Crawford; Bruce Barnes; Tony J. Anderson; Richard Wells; Giancarlo Corti; Lisa Allenbach; Daniel P. Erwin; Touraj Assefi; Mohammad Mojarradi

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 116 KB
• Volume: 301
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-2697
• DOI: 10.1006/abio.2001.5502

✦ Synopsis

A supercritical fluid extraction procedure and a chromatographic separation/detection method were developed for the detection of Earth-based microorganisms. After microbes in a sand or a soil sample were hydrolyzed in a diluted NH 4 OH/acetone solution, several redox compounds from bacteria could be effectively extracted with trimethylamine-modified supercritical CO 2 at 35°C and 300 atm. These signature redox-active compounds were separated by a reversedphase HPLC column in an ion-pair mode and then monitored with a diode array detector and an electrochemical detector. The analytical results demonstrated the feasibility of using the reported techniques to detect the chemical signature of life in barren desert sand samples.