Dietary Tracing of Amino Acids in Bone Collagen by Stable Isotope Analysis

通过稳定同位素分析膳食追踪骨胶原中的氨基酸

• 批准号: 9507662
• 负责人: Nikolaas van der Merwe
• 金额: $ 17.37万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1995
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1995-08-01 至 1999-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9507662&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dietary; Tracing; Amino; Acids; Bone

van der Merwe With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Nikolaas van der Merwe will analyze bone, muscle and hair tissue from pigs which have been raised on 14 different controlled diets. These materials will be obtained from animals raised at the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville Maryland and Dr. van der Merwe will analyze the carbon and nitrogen isotopic ratios in amino acids in both dietary items and pig tissue. The goal of the research is to study biochemical routing from dietary components to consumer tissues at the amino acid level. The diets are designed to identify the dietary components used in the synthesis of pig protein tissues, particularly where more than one protein source (animal and/or plant) is available. Dietary items have been chosen for their characteristic stable carbon isotope characteristics, depending on whether the plant foods have a C3 or C4 photosynthesis or the animal proteins are derived from such plants. The food items and pig tissues will be separated into constituent amino acids and their isotope ratios measured to model the relevant biochemical pathways. The long-term goal of the study is to reconstruct past human diets through the isotopic analysis of archaeological human skeletons. This procedure has been in use for more than fifteen years and has had a major impact on the understanding of past human subsistence and processes. However contradictions between isotope data and other evidence suggest that the relationship between the dietary importance of a food and the isotopic signal in consumer bone tissue is not linear. It appears for example that protein dominates in the construction of consumer collagen, while bone carbonate averages the carbon from the total diet. The work on pigs will help to refine this biochemical model and allow improved application to archaeological materials. This research is significant for a number of reasons. It will help to refine a technique which is widely used in archaeo logical research and which has potentially wide application in nutritional and metabolic studies as well. The work will increase our understanding of how past populations made use of their environment.

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Nikolaas van der Merwe博士将分析猪的骨骼、肌肉和毛发组织，这些猪被饲养在14种不同的控制饮食中。这些材料将从马里兰州贝尔茨维尔的美国农业部农业研究服务处饲养的动物身上获得，van der Merwe博士将分析膳食和猪组织中氨基酸的碳氮同位素比率。本研究的目的是在氨基酸水平上研究从膳食成分到消费组织的生化路线。该日粮旨在确定猪蛋白质组织合成中使用的日粮成分，特别是在可获得多种蛋白质来源（动物和/或植物）的情况下。根据植物性食物是否具有C3或C4光合作用，或动物蛋白质是否来自此类植物，选择了具有稳定碳同位素特征的膳食项目。食物和猪组织将被分离成组成氨基酸，并测量其同位素比率，以模拟相关的生化途径。这项研究的长期目标是通过对考古人类骨骼的同位素分析来重建过去人类的饮食。这一程序已经使用了15年以上，对了解过去人类的生存和过程产生了重大影响。然而，同位素数据与其他证据之间的矛盾表明，食物的饮食重要性与消费者骨组织中的同位素信号之间的关系不是线性的。例如，蛋白质在胶原蛋白的构建中占主导地位，而碳酸骨则平均占总饮食中的碳。在猪身上的工作将有助于完善这种生化模型，并允许改进应用于考古材料。这项研究意义重大，原因有很多。这将有助于完善一种广泛用于考古研究的技术，并在营养和代谢研究中也有潜在的广泛应用。这项工作将增加我们对过去人类如何利用环境的理解。