gas chromatograph coupled with a high-resolution mass spectrometer (GC-MS)

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In chemical ecology, our research focus is on the role of chemical substances that are exchanged between organisms as well as with the environment. We investigate a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from within-species communication (e.g. chemical cues of fertility or kinship) and animal-plant interactions (e.g. seed dispersal by animals, herbivory by insects) to environmental ecology (e.g. effects of pesticides used in monocultures on wildlife and human health). To do so, we investigate the composition of emitted chemicals as well as biological responses to them. Particularly in non-model species, however, significant advances in knowledge are frequently obstructed by the paucity of basal knowledge about the structural properties of the involved chemicals. This bottleneck critically hampers understanding the physiological mechanisms of chemical information transfer as well as its proximate and ultimate functions in intra- and interspecific communication. The present proposal aims to overcome this bottleneck by employing a state-of-the-art gas chromatography-mass spectrometry system (GC-MS), which is optimized for structure elucidation and characterization of unknown substances. The configuration includes a high-resolution MS along with a GC fraction collector for collecting and concentrating target fractions of chemical samples. These fractions allow subjecting target chemicals to a more refined structural analysis or to bioassay tests to investigate the biological responses of various organisms to these fractions. A sniffing port will further allow investigating whether candidate substances and differences between chemical profiles can be perceived by the sensory system of the receiver. Finally, a sample re-collector, that can recapture entire samples, will allow bridging the different components and integrating the requested instrumentation with existing devices to combine the advantages of each instrument for the best-possible performance. Together, this configuration will enable (i) the isolation of biologically active substances from the complex chemical mixtures emitted by plants, animals and their environment, (ii) characterizing the elemental composition of these substances, and (iii) assessing whether these substances are indeed perceivable by the sensory systems of receivers and could thus result in differences at the behavioural level. The system will be used by a team of experienced researchers representing the Faculty of Life Science at Leipzig University, iDiv (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig), as well as national and international collaborators working on chemical-ecological questions in various taxa at different ecological levels. We anticipate that the requested configuration facilitates major advances in chemical-ecological research, resulting in cooperative and innovative research at an internationally highly competitive level.