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Non‐Isothermal Kinetics of Hard α ‐Keratin Thermal Denaturation
Author(s) -
Istrate Daniel,
Popescu Crisan,
Möller Martin
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
macromolecular bioscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.924
H-Index - 105
eISSN - 1616-5195
pISSN - 1616-5187
DOI - 10.1002/mabi.200800344
Subject(s) - endothermic process , denaturation (fissile materials) , chemistry , autocatalysis , kinetics , activation energy , kinetic energy , thermodynamics , isothermal process , thermal , enthalpy , matrix (chemical analysis) , organic chemistry , adsorption , chromatography , physics , quantum mechanics , nuclear chemistry , catalysis
Abstract DSC measurements carried out at different heating rates were used for the kinetic analysis of the endothermic process assigned to the denaturation of the helical material from human hair in water excess. We found that the kinetic mechanism is autocatalytic and that the value of the activation energy is close to disulphide bond scission rather than to protein denaturation. This allowed us to propose a multistep mechanism for the thermal denaturation of hard α ‐keratins in water excess that relies on the 3‐phase model which describes their structure. The limiting step of the thermal denaturation process is then the scission of S–S bonds between the main morphological components, namely IF and matrix (IFAP). The theoretical proposed model shows a good agreement with the experimental recorded data.