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

在化学生态学中，我们的研究重点是有机体之间以及与环境交换的化学物质的作用。我们调查了广泛的问题，从物种内的交流(例如，生育或亲缘关系的化学线索)和动植物之间的相互作用(例如，动物传播种子，昆虫捕食)到环境生态(例如，单一养殖中使用的杀虫剂对野生动物和人类健康的影响)。为了做到这一点，我们调查了排放的化学物质的组成以及对它们的生物反应。然而，特别是在非模式物种中，知识方面的重大进展往往因缺乏关于所涉及化学品的结构性质的基础知识而受阻。这一瓶颈严重阻碍了对化学信息传递的生理机制以及其在种内和种间交流中的最近和最终功能的理解。本提案旨在通过采用最先进的气相色谱-质谱联用系统(GC-MS)来克服这一瓶颈，该系统针对未知物质的结构鉴定和表征进行了优化。该配置包括高分辨率MS以及用于收集和浓缩化学样品的目标馏分的GC馏分收集器。这些组分允许对目标化学物质进行更精细的结构分析或进行生物测试，以调查不同生物体对这些组分的生物反应。嗅探口将进一步允许调查接收器的感觉系统是否可以感知到候选物质和化学特征之间的差异。最后，可以重新采集整个样品的样品再采集器将允许连接不同的组件，并将所需的仪器与现有设备集成，以结合每种仪器的优势，以实现最佳性能。综合起来，这种配置将能够(I)从植物、动物及其环境排放的复杂化学混合物中分离出生物活性物质，(Ii)确定这些物质的元素组成，以及(Iii)评估这些物质是否确实可以被接受者的感觉系统感知到，从而可能导致行为层面的差异。该系统将由一组经验丰富的研究人员使用，他们代表莱比锡大学生命科学学院、德国综合生物多样性研究中心(哈勒-耶拿-莱比锡)，以及在不同生态水平上研究各种分类群中的化学-生态问题的国家和国际合作者。我们预计，所要求的配置将促进化学生态研究方面的重大进展，从而在国际上具有高度竞争力的合作和创新研究。

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.