State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
Astrobiology. 2010 Oct;10(8):783-8. doi: 10.1089/ast.2009.0407.
Cyanobacteria are capable of tolerating environmental extremes. To survive in extreme environments, cyanobacteria have developed the capability to adapt to a variety of stresses. For example, cyanobacteria have adopted a number of strategies with which to survive UV stress, including expression of UV-screening pigments and antioxidant systems. We have previously shown that several antioxidants are significantly expressed in Nostoc sp. by UVB irradiation. We report here that the content of UV-responsive biomarkers such as β-carotene and scytonemin can be easily detected by Fourier transform Raman spectroscopy with use of a small sample size and that the content of β-carotene is dependant on the UVB intensity and exposure time. Our results indicate that Raman spectroscopy may be a helpful tool to analyze UV-protective molecules of cyanobacterium in astrobiological studies without access to large sample sizes and complicated extractions, which are needed by other analytical techniques such as high-performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry.
蓝细菌能够耐受极端环境。为了在极端环境中生存，蓝细菌已经发展出适应各种压力的能力。例如，蓝细菌已经采用了许多策略来应对 UV 胁迫，包括表达 UV 屏蔽色素和抗氧化系统。我们之前已经表明，几种抗氧化剂在 Nostoc sp. 中通过 UVB 照射显著表达。我们在这里报告说，β-胡萝卜素和 Scytonemin 等 UV 响应生物标志物的含量可以通过使用小样本量的傅里叶变换拉曼光谱轻松检测到，并且β-胡萝卜素的含量取决于 UVB 强度和暴露时间。我们的结果表明，拉曼光谱可能是一种有用的工具，可用于在天体生物学研究中分析蓝细菌的 UV 保护分子，而无需使用其他分析技术（如高效液相色谱法和质谱法）所需的大样本量和复杂的提取。
