Initial Engineering Model Development for Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria Colonization Potential Related to Forward Contamination and Ecosynthesis

摘要

This research is intended to provide contamination and ecosynthesis researchers with an engineering development tool for understanding the productivity of metabolically active low-temperature brine habitats as potential sites for bacterial colonization by forward-contaminating Earth organisms. The specific extremophile microbial culturing conditions targeted were psychrophilic (low temperature), halophilic (high salt), high ambient sulfur, and anaerobic. These low-temperature or freezing-point-suppressed brine habitats with high ambient sulfur concentrations have been suggested as potential subsurface water resources on both Mars and Europa, and may be common among potentially viable extant water environments in the outer solar system.