Journal
ASTROBIOLOGY
Volume 19, Issue 10, Pages 1196-1210Publisher
MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC
DOI: 10.1089/ast.2018.1961
Keywords
Amino acids; Fatty acids; Chemical ionization; Mass spectrometry; Life detection; Ocean worlds
Funding
- JPL Research and Technology Development Program
- U.S. Government
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A new technique that has applications for the detection of nonvolatile organics on Ocean Worlds has been developed. Here, liquid mixtures of fatty acids (FAs) and/or amino acids (AAs) are introduced directly into a miniature quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer (QITMS) developed at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and analyzed. Two ionization methods, electron impact and chemical ionization (EI and CI, respectively), are compared and contrasted. Further, multiple CI reagents are tested to explore their potential to soften ionization of FAs and AAs. Both EI and CI yield mass spectra that bear signatures of FAs or AAs; however, soft CI yields significantly cleaner mass spectra that are easier to interpret. The combination of soft CI with tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) has also been demonstrated for AAs, generating fingerprint mass spectra of fragments from protonated parent ions. To mimic potential Ocean World conditions, water is used as the primary collision gas in MS/MS experiments. This technique has the potential for the in situ analysis of molecules in the cryogenic plumes of Ocean Worlds (e.g., Enceladus) and comets with the ultimate goal of detecting potential biosignatures.
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