2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Isotopologues as universal tracers of abiotic processes
| Project/Area Number |
21K18646
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| Research Institution | Tokyo Institute of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
ジルベルト アレキシー 東京工業大学, 理学院, 助教 (20726955)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2021-07-09 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | Biomarker / Hydrocarbons / Isotope / Isotopologue |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
We extended our analysis of 13C-13C isotopologue of C2 molecules to several samples of diverse origins.
We notably analyzed ethanol from different C-C bonds of glucose and demonstrated that glucose had a homogeneous pattern of 13C-13C isotopologues, namely, the distribution of 13C-13C is the same regardless of the C-C bond considered. This is crucial to understand the 13C-13C signature of biological molecules.
We measured ethane samples from several natural gas from thermogenic and abiotic origin. In addition, we conducted abiotic and thermogenic experiments and showed that the distinction between abiotic and thermogenic samples based on 13C-13C is universal. A simple model was also developed to explain the results obtained thus far. The results are reported in a paper submitted to Nature Geosciences (Taguchi, Gilbert et al.)
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The progress is rather smooth since the method was already developed and we simply needed to collect and purify samples.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Future work involves developing a method to measure 13C-13C isotopologues in organic molecules. In particular, we will focus on alanine which is an amino acid used by every organism on Earth. We then plan to do culture experiments of organisms using different C-fixation pathways in order to evaluate the 13C-13C analysis as a new biomarker.
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