Organic matter carbon isotope fractionation

Hayes JM, Strauss H, Kaufman AJ (1999) The abundance of in marine organic matter and isotopic fractionation in the global biogeochemical cycle of carbon during the past 800 Ma. ChemGeol 161 103-125... 

Hayes et al. (1999) systematically evaluated the carbon isotope fractionation between carbonates and coeval organic matter for the past 800 Ma. They concluded that earlier assumptions of a constant fractionation between carbonate and organic matter is untenable and that fractionations may vary by about 10%o depending on the dominant biogeochemical pathway as well on environmental conditions. 

It appears that FTT reactions can account reasonably well for most features of organic matter in meteorites. The only alternative process, the Miller-Urey synthesis, fails to account for the aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, nitrogen heterocyclics, many oxygen compounds, the polymer, and carbon isotope fractionations, though it remains an alternative and perhaps superior source of amino acids and may, in an extended sense, be responsible for the deuterium enrichments. 

McCarthy, M. D., Benner, R., Lee, C., Hedges, J. I., and Fogel, M. L. (2004). Amino acid carbon isotopic fractionation patterns in oceanic dissolved organic matter An unaltered photoautotrophic source for dissolved organic nitrogen in the ocean Marine Chemistry 92(1-4), 123-134. 

Carbon Isotope Fractionation in Organic Matter and Carbonates... 

Figure 6 Distribution of reported organic matter turnover under the various TEAPs in pristine surface water sediments and groundwater aquifers (a) and landfill-leachate contaminated groundwater (b). The respiration rates in pristine groundwater ((a) middle and right panels) were modeled using total electron acceptor species concentration (geochemical) and carbon isotope fractionation (isotopic constraints) (after Murphy and Schramke, 1998 and...

Bostrom B, Comstedt D, Ekblad A (2008) Can isotopic fractionation during respiration explain the 13C enriched sporocarps of ectomycorrhizal and saprotrophic fungi New Phytol 177 1012-1019 Boutton TW (1996) Stable carbon isotopes ratios of soil organic matter and their use as indicators of vegetation and climate change. In Boutton TW, Yamasaki S (eds) Mass spectrometry of soils. Marcel Dekker Inc., New York, pp 47-82... 

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