Divergent biochemical fractionation, not convergent temperature, explains cellulose oxygen isotope enrichment across latitudes.

ABSTRACT: Recent findings based on the oxygen isotope ratios of tree trunk cellulose indicate that the temperature of biomass production in biomes ranging from boreal to subtropical forests converge to an average leaf temperature of 21.4°C. The above conclusion has been drawn under the assumption that biochemically related isotopic fractionations during cellulose synthesis are not affected by temperature. Here we test the above assumption by heterotrophically generating cellulose at different temperatures and measuring the proportion of carbohydrate oxygen that exchange with water during cellulose synthesis and the average biochemical fractionation associated with this exchange. We observed no variation in the proportion of oxygen that exchange with different temperatures, which averaged 0.42 as it

SUBMITTER: Sternberg L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3221677 | biostudies-literature | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature