Article: Implications of the amino acid composition of Recent New Zealand brachiopods

Intracrystalline proteins and amino acids were extracted from within the shells of several species of Recent brachiopods from New Zealand. These molecules were characterized both by amino acid analysis and by SDS-PAGE and the data derived from this summarized by multivariate statistical analysis. Results indicate that the amino acids from within the shell may be used as objective taxonomic discriminators, and that the groupings recognized by this method are generally in confirmation with those from the Treatise 01 invertebrate paleontology. The presence of amino acids containing taxonomic information within the shells of Recent brachiopods has implications for the use of amino acid analysis in the investigation of fossil species