Metabolome analysis technologies are still in early development because, unlike genome, transcriptome and proteome analyses, metabolome analysis has to deal with a highly diverse range of biomolecules. Combinations of different analytical platforms are therefore required for comprehensive metabolomic studies. Each of these platforms covers only part of the metabolome. To establish multiparallel...

Stable isotope ratios (typically of carbon and nitrogen) provide one representation of an organism's trophic niche and are widely used to examine aspects of food web structure. Yet stable isotopes have not been applied to quantitatively characterize community-wide aspects of trophic structure (i.e., at the level of an entire food web). We propose quantitative metrics that can be used to this en...

A commercial reagent, known as the isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ), makes it possible to analyze multiple samples simultaneously. The ability of iTRAQ to compare relative protein abundances across as many as eight samples is a significant advantage over other stable isotope strategies, such as stable isotope labeling by amino acids in cell culture (SILAC) and isoto...

Eastern boundary currents are often described as 'wasp-waist' ecosystems in which one or few mid-level forage species support a high diversity of larger predators that are highly susceptible to fluctuations in prey biomass. The assumption of wasp-waist control has not been empirically tested in all such ecosystems. This study used stable isotope analysis to test the hypothesis of wasp-waist con...

The discipline of human evolution usually involves the evaluation of changes in gross and molecular morphology or changes in artifact assemblages. In contrast, stable isotope analysis is an indirect line of investigation. Understanding the human evolutionary sequence requires information on nutritional, biobehavioral, and general ecology. These are the kinds of information that stable isotope a...

This is a perspective from the peer session on stable isotope labelling and fluxomics at the Australian & New Zealand Metabolomics Conference (ANZMET) held from 30 March to 1 April 2016 at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. This report summarizes the key points raised in the peer session which focused on the advantages of using stable isotopes in modern metabolomics and the challeng...

Marine stable isotope records provide the basis for much of our understanding of past climates. During the past four decades of research, the exploitation of climatic information contained in marine stable isotopes led to the generation of a global network of marine stable isotope records. In particular, oxygen isotope records have been used to estimate past water temperatures, ice sheet sizes,...

In tropical mangroves, brachyuran crabs have been observed to consume high percentages of leaf litter production. However, questions concerning their ability to assimilate this low-quality food remain, as stable isotope analysis of C and N does not seem to support assimilation. Individuals of the common eastern Australian mangrove grapsid Parasesarma erythodactyla feeding on a mangrove leaf lit...

it is very important to determine the stable nitrogen isotope ratio for the nitrogenous substances in aerosols and the geochemistry behavior of stable nitrate ion isotopes in aerosols in order to elucidate the chemical and physical functions of clouds. hence, aerosol field sampling was conducted in the skies offshore from malibu beach and santa barbara, california, u.s.a. on 16 and 18 july 2009...

the upper cretaceous carbonate sequence of ab-deraz formation is well exposed in the kopet- dagh basin. this formation comprises marly limestone and three chalky limestone units. chalky limestone of ab-deraz formation is mainly composed of calcareous dinoflagellate (pithonellid calcispher), cocolithofore and planktonic foraminifera. carbon and oxygen stable isotopes analysis of the third chalky...