Dataset Information

Tracing carbon sources through aquatic and terrestrial food webs using amino acid stable isotope fingerprinting.

ABSTRACT: Tracing the origin of nutrients is a fundamental goal of food web research but methodological issues associated with current research techniques such as using stable isotope ratios of bulk tissue can lead to confounding results. We investigated whether naturally occurring ?(13)C patterns among amino acids (?(13)CAA) could distinguish between multiple aquatic and terrestrial primary production sources. We found that ?(13)CAA patterns in contrast to bulk ?(13)C values distinguished between carbon derived from algae, seagrass, terrestrial plants, bacteria and fungi. Furthermore, we showed for two aquatic producers that their ?(13)CAA patterns were largely unaffected by different environmental conditions despite substantial shifts in bulk ?(13)C values. The potential of assessing the major carbon sources at the base of the food web was demonstrated for freshwater, pelagic, and estuarine consumers; consumer ?(13)C patterns of essential amino acids largely matched those of the dominant primary producers in each system. Since amino acids make up about half of organismal carbon, source diagnostic isotope fingerprints can be used as a new complementary approach to overcome some of the limitations of variable source bulk isotope values commonly encountered in estuarine areas and other complex environments with mixed aquatic and terrestrial inputs.

SUBMITTER: Larsen T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3775739 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Tracing carbon sources through aquatic and terrestrial food webs using amino acid stable isotope fingerprinting.

Larsen Thomas T Ventura Marc M Andersen Nils N O'Brien Diane M DM Piatkowski Uwe U McCarthy Matthew D MD

PloS one 20130917 9

Tracing the origin of nutrients is a fundamental goal of food web research but methodological issues associated with current research techniques such as using stable isotope ratios of bulk tissue can lead to confounding results. We investigated whether naturally occurring δ(13)C patterns among amino acids (δ(13)CAA) could distinguish between multiple aquatic and terrestrial primary production sources. We found that δ(13)CAA patterns in contrast to bulk δ(13)C values distinguished between carbon ...[more]

PMID: 24069196

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Project description:Tracking the metabolic activity of whole soil communities can improve our understanding of the transformation and fate of carbon in soils. We used stable isotope metabolomics to trace 13C from nine labeled carbon sources into the water-soluble metabolite pool of an agricultural soil over time. Soil was amended with a mixture of all nine sources, with one source isotopically labeled in each treatment. We compared changes in the 13C enrichment of metabolites with respect to carbon source and time over a 48-day incubation and contrasted differences between soluble sources (glucose, xylose, amino acids, etc.) and insoluble sources (cellulose and palmitic acid). Whole soil metabolite profiles varied singularly by time, while the composition of 13C-labeled metabolites differed primarily by carbon source (R2 = 0.68) rather than time (R2 = 0.07), with source-specific differences persisting throughout incubations. The 13C labeling of metabolites from insoluble carbon sources occurred slower than that from soluble sources but yielded a higher average atom percent (atom%) 13C in metabolite markers of biomass (amino acids and nucleic acids). The 13C enrichment of metabolite markers of biomass stabilized between 5 and 15 atom% 13C by the end of incubations. Temporal patterns in the 13C enrichment of tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediates, nucleobases (uracil and thymine), and by-products of DNA salvage (allantoin) closely tracked microbial activity. Our results demonstrate that metabolite production in soils is driven by the carbon source supplied to the community and that the fate of carbon in metabolites do not generally converge over time as a result of ongoing microbial processing and recycling. IMPORTANCE Carbon metabolism in soil remains poorly described due to the inherent difficulty of obtaining information on the microbial metabolites produced by complex soil communities. Our study demonstrates the use of stable isotope probing (SIP) to study carbon metabolism in soil by tracking 13C from supplied carbon sources into metabolite pools and biomass. We show that differences in the metabolism of sources influence the fate of carbon in soils. Heterogeneity in 13C-labeled metabolite profiles corresponded with compositional differences in the metabolically active populations, providing a basis for how microbial community composition correlates with the quality of soil carbon. Our study demonstrates the application of SIP-metabolomics in studying soils and identifies several metabolite markers of growth, activity, and other aspects of microbial function.

Dataset Information

Tracing carbon sources through aquatic and terrestrial food webs using amino acid stable isotope fingerprinting.

Publications

Tracing carbon sources through aquatic and terrestrial food webs using amino acid stable isotope fingerprinting.

Similar Datasets

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