SGER: Stable Isotope Fingerprinting: A Novel Approach to Identifying Amino Acid Biosynthetic Sources, Using Stable Isotope Variation Among Amino Acids.

SGER：稳定同位素指纹图谱：利用氨基酸之间的稳定同位素变异来识别氨基酸生物合成来源的新方法。

• 批准号: 0552014
• 负责人: Diane O'Brien
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Alaska Fairbanks Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-15 至 2008-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0552014&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SGER; Stable; Isotope; Fingerprinting; Novel

Understanding nutrient flow is a central goal of both organismal biology and ecosystem ecology. In nutritional physiology, for example, researchers are only starting to appreciate the complexity of how animals meet requirements for essential amino acids and fatty acids, and how meeting those requirements can generate physiological interdependency. In arctic ecosystems, amino acids are a key source of nitrogen for boreal plant communities, but how they are supplied to soil is unclear. Nutritional associations between plants and root-fungi (mycorrhizae) are common, but the details of nutrient exchange between the partners are not well known. In all these cases, progress is limited by the available tools for tracing nutrient exchange. This research develops a new approach to tracing amino acid biosynthetic sources, using the variation generated by organismal metabolism in the carbon isotopic signatures of amino acids. These suites of isotopic signatures can be thought of as a biosynthetic "fingerprint," and these fingerprints may be diagnostic of the type of organism that produced them. The proposed research will characterize the amino acid isotopic fingerprints of select microorganisms, plants, and fungi. These organisms can synthesize de novo all twenty amino acids found in proteins, and potentially supply amino acids to animals, soil nutrient pools, or symbiotic partners. If these fingerprints prove to be robust, reproducible indicators of biosynthetic sources, they would transform the ability of researchers to address questions about nutrient flow in natural systems that cannot be answered with present technology. Such a tool will be of great interest to scientists studying physiological ecology, evolutionary ecology, plant-insect interactions, plant biology, ecosystem ecology, and biogeochemistry. The analyses used to measure isotope signatures in amino acids are becoming increasingly available. However, the lack of comparative data has contributed to a growing literature that is rife with poorly validated assumptions. Thus, this research will significantly advance our understanding of the variability of amino acid signatures within and among organisms, and will provide the foundation for a methodology with wide ranging applicability. This research project will involve training of a graduate student in the development of this novel tool.

了解营养流是生物生物学和生态系统生态学的核心目标。例如，在营养生理学中，研究人员刚刚开始欣赏动物如何满足必需氨基酸和脂肪酸的要求的复杂性，以及满足这些需求如何产生生理相互依存的方式。 在北极生态系统中，氨基酸是北方植物群落的氮的关键来源，但是如何向土壤供应它们。 植物与根 - 束（Mycorrhizae）之间的营养相关性很常见，但是伴侣之间营养交换的细节并不众所周知。 在所有这些情况下，进度受到追踪营养交换的可用工具的限制。 这项研究开发了一种新的方法来追踪氨基酸生物合成源，使用由氨基酸的碳同位素特征中的有机代谢产生的变异。这些同位素特征的套件可以被认为是一种生物合成的“指纹”，并且这些指纹可以诊断出产生它们的生物的类型。 拟议的研究将表征精选微生物，植物和真菌的氨基酸同位素指纹。 这些生物可以从头合成蛋白质中发现的所有二十种氨基酸，并可能向动物，土壤养分池或共生伴侣提供氨基酸。 如果这些指纹被证明是强大的，生物合成来源的可再现指标，它们将改变研究人员解决关于自然系统中营养流的问题的能力，这些问题无法通过当前的技术来回答。研究生物学生态学，进化生态学，植物体型相互作用，植物生物学，生态系统生态学和生物地球化学的科学家将非常感兴趣。 用于测量氨基酸中同位素特征的分析越来越多。 但是，缺乏比较数据导致了越来越多的文献，该文献的盛行，其假设验证较差。 因此，这项研究将大大提高我们对生物体内外氨基氨基签名的变异性的理解，并为具有广泛适用性的方法提供基础。该研究项目将涉及研究研究生的培训，以开发这种新颖的工具。