Abstract:
An emerging trend towards non-laboratory based biological and microbiological marker
analysis is occurring in multiple sectors of science and industry. In the medical sector, these
trends have demonstrated that conducting sample analyses away from centralised laboratories
not only makes analyses quicker and more convenient (e.g. a home pregnancy test), but can
offer services that are otherwise impractical (e.g. mobile laboratories to diagnose disease in
the developing world). In the environmental sector, similar benefits, plus the ability to
develop and test hypotheses, protocols and sampling strategies within a field campaign, are
possible with in-field analyses. Icy environments in particular would benefit from in situ or
in-field life detection as they are typically remote, and hence impart high logistical costs for
repeated field campaigns and associated sample return with the implication that the
efficiency of scientific return is poor. Unfortunately, most equipment and protocols
developed for microbiological analyses in other sectors of science and industry are unsuitable
for direct application to in-field use in icy environments because of poor compatibility with
icy environment sample matrices and frequently inappropriate microbiological targets.
Hence within this work, two hypotheses were tested: that (i) microbiological detection infield
in icy environments is possible and through this (ii) unique and more efficient scientific
studies can be conducted. Cont/d.
