The main objective of this thesis was to develop statistical and analytical methods for untargeted analyses of complex environmental matrices like soil and sediment. Untargeted analyses are notoriously difficult to perform in matrices like soil and sediment because of the complexity of organic matter composition within these matrices. This thesis aimed to (1) Develop and compare extraction methods for untargeted analyses of soil and sediment while also developing data handling and quality control protocols; (2) Investigate novel applications of untargeted analyses for environmental classification and monitoring; and (3) Investigate the experimental factors that can influence the organic matter composition of untargeted extractions. CHAPTER TWO is a literature review of metabolomics protocols, and these protocols were incorporated into a proposed workflow for performing untargeted analysis in oil, soil, and sediment. This thesis contains the first application of untargeted analysis to freshwater lake sediment organic matter (i.e. sedimentomics) in CHAPTER THREE, and this has implications for discovering new biomarkers for paleolimnology (APPENDIX ONE). I demonstrated successful extraction methods for both sedimentomics and soil metabolomics studies in CHAPTER THREE and CHAPTER FIVE, respectively, using the proposed workflow from CHAPTER TWO. I also applied sedimentomics to the classification of lake sediments using machine learning and geostatistics based on sediment organic matter compositions in CHAPTER FOUR; this was a novel application of sedimentomics that could have implications for ecosystem classifications and advance our knowledge of organic matter cycling in lake sediments. Lastly, in CHAPTER FIVE I determined microbial activity, extraction method, and soil type can all influence the composition of soil organic matter extracts in soil metabolomics experiments. I also developed novel quality controls and quantitative methods that can help control these influences in CHAPTER FIVE and APPENDIX THREE. APPENDIX TWO was written in collaboration with multiple researchers and is a review of all “omics” types of analyses that can be performed on soil or sediment, and how methods like the untargeted analysis of soil and sediment organic matter can be linked with metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and metaproteomics for a comprehensive metaphenomics analysis of soil and sediment ecosystems. In CHAPTER SIX the conclusions and implications for each chapter and overall for this thesis are detailed and I describe future directions for the field. In the end the overall conclusions of this thesis were: 1) Quality controls are necessary for sedimentomics and soil metabolomics studies, 2) Sedimentomics is a valid technique to highlight changes in sediment organic matter, 3) Soil metabolomics and sedimentomics yield more information about carbon cycling than traditional measurements, and 4) Soil metabolomics organic matter extractions are more variable and require more quality controls.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/41626 |
| Date | 07 January 2021 |
| Creators | Bell, Madison |
| Contributors | Blais, Jules |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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