Early Career: Instrument and Technician Support for the Isotopic Analysis of Individual Organic Compounds in the Earth System

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This grant from the Division of Earth Sciences Instrumentation and Facilities program will support the purchase of a peripheral device to be coupled to existing instrumentation shared by Earth science researchers at the University of South Carolina. The instrumentation will provide new analytical capabilities allowing the characterization of isotopic composition of specific organic compounds, which can then be used to better understand processes such as microbial physiology, global biogeochemical cycles and ancient climates. The availability of this instrumentation will provide researchers to enhance their ongoing research, and also provide essential hands-on training to students. The instrumentation will be used as an educational tool to expand on ?textbook? knowledge presented in undergraduate studies, and will be used in a NSF-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. Specifically, the researchers will acquire a gas chromatograph (GC) peripheral for the operation of a gas-chromatograph-combustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometer (GC-c-IRMS). The integration of a GC front-end peripheral to an existing IRMS instrument will allow the isolation of specific compounds for individual isotopic analysis, which are otherwise masked by ?bulk? analysis of organic matter. The combined instrumentation will advance research in quantifying the amount of bacterially-produced refractory organic matter in the ocean, identifying the activities of belowground microbial communities, and investigating microbial processes in Arctic permafrost.