Louis, Godfrey; Santhosh Kumar, A(Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, 2008)
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Abstract:
The red cells found in the red rain in Kerala, India are now considered as a possible case of extraterrestrial life form.
These cells can undergo rapid replication even at an extreme high temperature of 300 deg C. They can also be cultured in
diverse unconventional chemical substrates. The molecular composition of these cells is yet to be identified. This paper
reports the unusual autofluorescence characteristic of the cultured red rain cells. A spectrofluorimetric study has been
performed to investigate this, which shows a systematic shift of the fluorescence emission peak wavelength as the
excitation wavelength is increased. Conventional biomolecules are not known to have this property. Details of this
investigation and the results are discussed.