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Archaeological materials, such as bone, organic residues, hair, or sea shells, can serve as substrates for isotopic analysis. Carbon, nitrogen and zinc isotope ratios are used to investigate the diets of past people; these isotopic systems can be used with others, such as strontium or oxygen, to answer questions about population movements and cultural interactions, such as trade.
Isotope fractionation occurs during a phase transition, when the ratio of light to heavy isotopes in the involved molecules changes. When water vapor condenses (an equilibrium fractionation), the heavier water isotopes (18 O and 2 H) become enriched in the liquid phase while the lighter isotopes (16 O and 1 H) tend toward the vapor phase. [1]
Carbon on Earth naturally occurs in two stable isotopes, with 98.9% in the form of 12 C and 1.1% in 13 C. [1] [8] The ratio between these isotopes varies in biological organisms due to metabolic processes that selectively use one carbon isotope over the other, or "fractionate" carbon through kinetic or thermodynamic effects. [1]
A nuclide is a species of an atom with a specific number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus, for example, carbon-13 with 6 protons and 7 neutrons. The nuclide concept (referring to individual nuclear species) emphasizes nuclear properties over chemical properties, whereas the isotope concept (grouping all atoms of each element) emphasizes chemical over nuclear.
Owing to both of these advantages, the method of isotope dilution is regarded among chemistry measurement methods of the highest metrological standing. [1] Isotopes are variants of a particular chemical element which differ in neutron number. All isotopes of a given element have the same number of protons in each atom.
The chosen isotope can act as a label on that compound that can be identified through nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometry (MS). Some of the most common stable isotopes are 2 H, 13 C, and 15 N, which can further be produced into NMR solvents, amino acids, nucleic acids, lipids, common metabolites and cell growth media. [6]
Nitrogen-15, or 15 N, is often used in agricultural and medical research, for example in the Meselson–Stahl experiment to establish the nature of DNA replication. [12] An extension of this research resulted in development of DNA-based stable-isotope probing, which allows examination of links between metabolic function and taxonomic identity of microorganisms in the environment, without the ...
Unstable isotopes decay at a predictable rate over time. [2] The first stable isotope was discovered in 1913, and most were identified by the 1930s. [2] Archaeology was relatively slow to adopt the study of isotopes. Whereas chemistry, biology and physics, saw a rapid uptake in applications of isotope analysis in the 1950s and 1960s, following ...