Posted by tourdemars to Life on Mars at June 7, 2004 11:06 AM

Berkeley biophysicist, Richard Mathies, talked with Astrobiology Magazine about plans for a 2009 experiment to test for martian biology. By making a portable test for protein detection and classification, his contribution to future forensics may yield the most comprehensive tests yet for detecting life elsewhere. Can heating soil samples with amino acids reveal biological origin-- or not?