Serotaxonomic Investigations of Recent, Pleistocene, and Pliocene Brachiopods

要求对新近、更新世和上新世腕足动物属贝壳的多肽含量进行研究，以评估不同年龄的现存和化石贝壳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来观察这些腕足动物属之间及其超家族之间是否存在交叉反应性差异。初步研究表明，这些腕足动物在其外壳材料中含有氨基酸作为肽存在。建议对这些残留的大分子在不同年龄的腕足动物的壳中进行研究。来自化石壳的氨基酸将被分析为对构性，作为最近污染的测试。对现存材料的研究将有助于调整我们的方法，对更新世和上新世样品的研究将帮助我们测量时间和成岩作用在预期的壳蛋白破坏中日益增加的影响，并表明对越来越古老的化石壳进行类似的研究是否有可能证明是值得的。

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.