Turnover of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in mammal tissues

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Karl Auerswald
• Subject Area: Animal Breeding, Animal Nutrition, Animal Husbandry
• Term: from 2010 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 167880131

The stable isotope composition of carbon and nitrogen (δ13C and δ15N respectively) of a consumer’s tissue reflects the respective dietary isotopic composition and thus analysis of isotope composition has become an important tool in animal nutrition, food authentification, ecology, forensics and archaeology. Changes in diet, however, are only partly reflected, depending on the turn-over of body pools. Present models, like the mostly used Hesslein model and the reaction progress variable model, do not take into account that the body is composed of interacting metabolic pools and stores, which differ in turn-over characteristics. While these models often allow a sufficiently good fit to experimental data, their physiological meaning and hence their predictive ability is poor. We propose that compartmental modelling, which has recently successfully been applied in plant physiology, is a method, which allows setting up physiologically meaningful models. We want to show this for existing data sets resulting from sophisticated, controlled experiments with different animal species carried out by a number of researchers. If successful, this will allow a better understanding of isotope turnover.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France
• Participating Persons: Professor Dr. Johannes Schnyder; Dr. Antoine Zazzo