A ​‘nano-suit’ that allows organ­isms to tol­er­ate high vacu­um conditions

A simple sur­face modi­fic­a­tion can enable mul­ti­cel­lu­lar organ­isms to sur­vive in a high vacu­um, a study reports. Takahiko Har­iyama and col­leagues examined the abil­ity of vari­ous mul­ti­cel­lu­lar organ­isms to sur­vive in a high vacu­um envir­on­ment in the obser­va­tion cham­ber of a scan­ning elec­tron micro­scope (SEM). Where­as most mul­ti­cel­lu­lar organ­isms become rap­idly dehyd­rated and die when exposed to the greatly reduced pres­sure of a high vacu­um, the research­ers found that expos­ure to elec­tron beams or plasma mod­i­fied the sur­face of some organ­isms and allowed them to sur­vive. When anim­als whose sur­faces were covered by extra­cel­lu­lar sub­stances (ECS) were sub­jec­ted to elec­tron bom­bard­ment or plasma irra­di­ation, they imme­di­ately formed a 50 – 100 nm pro­tect­ive lay­er over their sur­face. The thin sur­face bar­ri­er, which the authors named a ​“nano-suit,” appeared to be caused by sur­face poly­mer­iz­a­tion, and the authors found that an arti­fi­cial coat­ing of the non-tox­ic deter­gent com­pound Tween-20 allowed organ­isms without a nat­ur­al ECS coat­ing to sur­vive SEM expos­ure. A thin poly­mer nano-suit allows mul­ti­cel­lu­lar organ­isms to tol­er­ate high vacu­um by act­ing as a flex­ible bar­ri­er to the pas­sage of gases and liquids, and the coat­ing would allow live spe­ci­mens to be observed using a high res­ol­u­tion SEM, accord­ing to the authors.

Ori­gin­al publication:

​“A thin poly­mer mem­brane, nano-suit, enhan­cing sur­viv­al across the con­tinuum between air and high vacu­um,” by Yas­uharu Takaku et al. Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Academy of Sci­ences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1221341110, 2013. Source: EurekAle