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Hot off the presses: Amino Acid Compound Specific #Isotope Analysis (#AACSIA) to understand #coral nutrition. We show corals are reliant on symbiont-derived carbon and nitrogen for AA. Flexible nutrition? Not so much. @GatesCoralLab @himb_soest bit.ly/3uxZOe2
Amino acids in the AACSIA terminology are essential (from diets) or non-essential (synthesized) for carbon, and either trophic (change with feeding) or source (reflect origins) for nitrogen. At the time of our experiment no one had tested C and N AACSIA in corals.
Corals are weird. They can produce a lot of AA, most animals can't. Their symbionts also produce nearly all AA, as they are plants. So together the holobiont may produce everything "in house" or source building blocks from feeding on plankton.
