Polyzyklische Chinone in fossilen und rezenten Crinoiden

如果保存条件有利，甚至复杂的有机分子也可以在化石记录中存活下来，并可以在产生它们的生物体的化石中找到。近年来，这种内源性化石化合物引起了人们越来越多的关注。然而，尽管这些化合物可以提供有价值的古生物学和地球化学信息，但到目前为止，对化石生物中保存的有机分子的了解仍然非常少。拟议的项目是一个跨学科的案例研究，重点是从化石和现代海百合（海洋动物，棘皮动物）的有机成分的化学表征。由于几乎不变的生物分子（多环醌色素）已从侏罗纪和三叠纪（2.4亿年前）的两种紫色海百合中提取出来，并且类似的色素仍然存在于活的海百合中，这类动物提供了一个独特的机会来研究这些（和其他）生物分子及其在地球历史中的成岩产物。这些数据可以为多环醌（和聚酮化合物）的化学演化提供新的见解，可能对化学分类学产生影响。此外，不同保存状态海百合的数据可以提供成岩作用期间有机分子转化过程的重要信息。

If preservation conditions are favourable even complex organic molecules may survive in the fossil record and can be found within fossils of the organisms that produced them. Such endogenous fossil compounds have attracted increasing attention in the last few years. However, although such compounds can provide valuable paleobiological and geochemical information, the knowledge of organic molecules preserved in fossil organisms in general is extremely poor until now. The proposed project represents an interdisciplinary case study and is focused on the chemical characterization of organic constituents from fossil and modern crinoids (marine animals, Echinodermata). Since almost unchanged biomolecules (polycyclic quinone pigments) have been extracted from two purple coloured crinoids of Jurassic and Triassic age (240 million years old in the latter case) and similar pigments still occur in living crinoids, 2 this class of animals provides an unique opportunity to study the occurrence of these (and other) biomolecules and their diagenetic products in earth history. Such data can provide new insights in the chemical evolution of polycyclic quinones (and polyketide compounds in general) with possible implications for chemotaxonomy. Moreover, data from crinoids with different states of preservation can provide important information on the transformation processes of organic molecules during diagenesis.