The Representation of Isotopic Fractionation Between Diet and Body Component

THE REPRESENTATION OF ISOTOPIC FRACTIONATION BETWEEN DIET AND BODY COMPONENT 

This section develops a general approach to data representation and describes some of its features. 

Any quantitative relationship between body isotopic composition and 

A DIFF relates a specified body component isotopic composition to the various compositions of a specified and complete set of dietary components. The complete diet must be accounted for in the DIFF, but it can be partitioned in any way that seems sensible for example, into individual amino acids or into protein, carbohydrate and lipid, etc. 

Before proposing a general formulation, we illustrate a DIFF with a simple case, in which we consider bone collagen as the body component, and the diet as containingjust two components, protein and non-protein. In the notation, B stands for body 5 values, and D for diet 8 values suffixes distinguish the particular component specified. Thus Bcolla stands for the collagen 8 C, Dp and Dn for the dietary protein and non-protein 6 C values. 

---