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

在化学生态学中，我们的研究重点是生物之间以及与环境交换的化学物质的作用。我们研究了广泛的问题，从种内交流（如生育或亲缘关系的化学线索）和动植物相互作用（如动物的种子传播，昆虫的食草性）到环境生态学（如单一栽培中使用的农药对野生动物和人类健康的影响）。为此，我们研究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，由于缺乏有关化学物质结构特性的基础知识，知识的重大进展经常受到阻碍。这一瓶颈严重阻碍了理解化学信息传递的生理机制，以及它在种内和种间交流中的直接和最终功能。本课题旨在通过采用最先进的气相色谱-质谱系统（GC-MS）来克服这一瓶颈，该系统对未知物质的结构解析和表征进行了优化。该配置包括高分辨率质谱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品进行更精细的结构分析或进行生物测定试验，以研究各种生物体对这些组分的生物反应。嗅探端口将进一步允许调查候选物质和化学特征之间的差异是否可以被接收器的感觉系统感知。最后，可以重新捕获整个样品的样品重收集器将允许桥接不同的组件，并将所要求的仪器与现有设备集成，以结合每种仪器的优势以获得最佳性能。总之，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特征，以及（iii）评估这些物质是否确实可被受体的感觉系统感知，从而可能导致行为层面的差异。该系统将由代表莱比锡大学生命科学学院iDiv（德国哈雷-耶纳-莱比锡综合生物多样性研究中心）的一组经验丰富的研究人员以及在不同生态水平的各种分类群中研究化学-生态问题的国家和国际合作者使用。我们预计，所要求的配置将促进化学生态学研究的重大进展，从而在国际上具有高度竞争力的水平上开展合作和创新研究。

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.