Dear all:
I have been preparing a sample of muscle tissue of fish for C, N, and S isotopic analysis. I have dehydrated the sample for two weeks, and now it looks like a sticky and extremely oily mass (attach a picture). As far as I know, it is not recommended to do lipid extraction for C isotope analysis, so I wonder if anyone has a suggestion about what can I do with my sample?
As it is now, it´s impossible to send the sample to a lab for isotopic analysis.
Thanks in advance!
I have never seen such an oily a muscle sample. Anyway, my suggestions:
1_ If that is dorsal muscle maybe you shoud try another parts (i.e. heart)
2_Perform lipid extraction (in this case it seems necessary)
3_Maybe you could try lyophilization....
Good luck!
No, for very oily samples, you need to lipid extract the sample to get a good 13C value; it's the 15N value that may be affected. However, there are arithmetic corrections available so you could simply analyze the sample and apply a correction.
Thank you both for your help, I´m gonna try the lyophilization first and then the lipid extraction.
Yes, you could simply analyze the sample and apply a correction. see this paper
Stable isotope analysis: modelling lipid normalization for muscle and eggs from arctic mammals and birds.
Dorothe´ e Ehrich *, Arnaud Tarroux, Jenny Stien, Nicolas Lecomte, Siw Killengreen,Dominique Berteaux and Nigel G. Yoccoz.
Methods in Ecology and Evolution 2011, 2, 66–76.
If you are interested in 13C and 15N (and 34S) signature of muscle tissue, i.e. the protein fraction, it is necessary to defat (degrease) your samples since otherwise the 13C signature of the lipid fraction will (typically around
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Zoology
- Ichthyology
- Vertebrates
- Fish