Tufts University, United States of America.
Tufts University, United States of America.
Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol. 2023 Sep;283:111472. doi: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2023.111472. Epub 2023 Jun 28.
Measuring corticosterone in feathers allows researchers to make long-term, retrospective assessments of physiology with non-invasive sampling. To date, there is little evidence that steroids degrade within the feather matrix, however this has yet to be determined from the same sample over many years. In 2009, we made a pool of European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) feathers that had been ground to a homogenous powder using a ball mill and stored on a laboratory bench. Over the past 14 years, a subset of this pooled sample has been assayed via radioimmunoassay (RIA) 19 times to quantify corticosterone. Despite high variability across time (though low variability within assays), there was no effect of time on measured feather corticosterone concentration. In contrast, two enzyme immunoassays (EIA) produced higher concentrations than the samples assayed with RIA, though this difference is likely due to different binding affinities of the antibodies used. The present study provides further support for researchers to use specimens stored long-term and from museums for feather corticosterone quantification, and likely applies to corticosteroid measurements in other keratinized tissues.
测量羽毛中的皮质酮可以让研究人员通过非侵入性取样对生理状况进行长期的回顾性评估。迄今为止，几乎没有证据表明类固醇会在羽毛基质中降解，但这尚未在多年的同一样本中得到确定。2009 年，我们用球磨机将欧洲椋鸟（Sturnus vulgaris）的羽毛磨成均匀的粉末，制成了一个羽毛粉混合物，并储存在实验室的台面上。在过去的 14 年里，从这个混合样本中抽取了一部分，通过放射免疫分析（RIA）进行了 19 次检测，以定量皮质酮。尽管时间跨度内的变异性很大（尽管每个检测内的变异性较低），但皮质酮的测量值与时间没有关系。相比之下，两种酶联免疫吸附测定（EIA）的检测结果比用 RIA 检测的结果高，尽管这种差异可能是由于所用抗体的结合亲和力不同。本研究进一步支持研究人员使用长期储存的标本和来自博物馆的标本进行羽毛皮质酮定量分析，而且这种方法可能适用于其他角蛋白组织中皮质甾类的测量。
