Serotaxonomic Investigations of Recent, Pleistocene, and Pliocene Brachiopods

请拨资金调查最近、更新世和上新世腕足类贝壳的多肽含量，以评估在不同年代的现存贝壳和化石贝壳中进行血清分类学和多肽分析的潜力和局限性。我们计划使用免疫学方法，看看是否可以在这些腕足类属之间以及它们的超级家族之间检测到交叉反应的差异。初步研究表明，这些腕足类动物的外壳材料中含有以多肽形式存在的氨基酸。建议研究这些残留在不同年龄腕足类贝壳中的大分子。将对化石贝壳中的氨基酸进行对映性分析，以测试最近的污染情况。对现有材料的研究将有助于微调我们的方法，对更新世和上新世样品的研究应该有助于我们测量时间和成岩作用对壳层蛋白质预期破坏的日益增加的影响，并应该表明对越来越古老的贝壳化石进行类似的工作是否有可能被证明是值得的。

Funds are requested for an investigation of the polypeptide content of the shells of Recent, Pleistocene, and Pliocene brachiopod genera in an attempt to assess the potential and limitations of serotaxonomy and polypeptide analysis in extant and fossil shells of varying age. We plan to use immunological methods to see if differences in cross-reactivity can be detected between these brachiopod genera, and between their superfamilies. Preliminary work shows that these brachiopods have amino acids present as peptides within their shell material. It is proposed to investigate these remnant macromolecules in the shells of brachiopods of different ages. Amino acids from the fossil shells will be analysed for enantiomorphy as a test for recent contamination. Work on extant material will serve to fine-tune our methods, and work on Pleistocene and Pliocene samples should help us measure the increasing effect of time and diagenesis in the anticipated destruction of shell protein, and should show whether similar work on increasingly older fossil shells is likely to prove worthwhile.