An experimental setup to study by remote sensing analyses cyanobacteria growth and photosynthetic performances under non-terrestrial simulated environments

In the last decade Ground-based and space telescopes discovered a great number of new extrasolar planets (about 4000 confirmed so far). Many of these new exoplanets, with about the size of the Earth, lay in the Habitable Zone (HZ) of their host star. The most interesting rocky earth-like planets have been found orbiting the HZ of Red Dwarf stars, the lowest in mass and irradiance, belonging to the M-type star category. M-type stars are the most common type of stars in our galaxy (about 76% of total stars), and are considered excellent candidates for terrestrial planet searches, as they can live long enough to allow life evolution. In this frame, our project has within its main objectives to understand if terrestrial oxygenic photosynthetic organisms could live and maintain their photosynthetic activities under atmospheric and light conditions resembling those of extrasolar planets orbiting the HZ of M-type stars and furthermore produce biosignatures detectable by remote sensing analysis. The necessity to simulate those conditions and test our organisms under environmental parameters which can deeply differ from terrestrial ones imposes to search for non-invasive approaches to collect data about strains growth and the impact of their photosynthesis on a terrestrial or modified atmosphere (N2 atmosphere with increasing levels of CO2, reaching 100% to simulate an exo-Mars or a primeval atmosphere). Here we present an experimental setup capable of following the growth of photosynthetic microorganisms by means of reflectance measurements and furthermore their oxygen evolution and carbon dioxide consumption in continuous, by means of spectroscopic and luminescence-based techniques, respectively.