Studies Of Skin Collagen Of Turtles And A Primary Cosmetic Product From It

Turtles, which survived for over a few hundred-million years in evolution, may bear important values in the fields of life science or economic exploitation. Much attention has been paid to the turtles' longevity. In recent years, researches on turtles' longevity factors and active substances contributing to the investigation of anti-carcinoma and sanitarian drug have become a scientific heat. Referring to the available documents, the mechanism of turtle's longevity is complex and involves multiplicate scientific fields such as Bionics, Ecology, Physiology, Genetics, Biochemistry and so on. In order to test the application of turtle shell collagen into the cosmetic, we analysed the characters of water holding capacity, fat absorption and emulsifying property of the lysates of turtle skin collagen. Furthermore we have done the first trial of the cosmetic manufacture.This study includes mainly three parts:The first part is to extract the collagen from the turtle skin in the enzyme method, and compare the lysates of turtle skin collagen with that from pig in their water holding capacity, fat absorption, emulsifying property and amino acid composition. We find that the former have better water holding capacity. And they only have minor difference in fat absorption and emulsifying property. While comparing their amino acid composition, the lysates of turtle skin collagen have much higher content of alanine, tyrosin, leucine than that from thePig.The second part is to identify the influence of turtle skin collagen on the content of rat skin collagen. We make the hydroxyproline curve through Chloramine--T method. And the turtle' scollagen is hydrolyzed and make into emulsifying body for daubing on the unhairing region of the rat's back. Then we compare the hydroxyproline content of the daubed skin and the normal skin control, the results indicate that turtle skin collagen can increase the collagen content of the rat skin and may have functions for antiaging and may be protective material for the cosmetic.The third part is to explore the manufacture technique and recipe of a cosmetic. Consulting the process of the Commodity Factory in Changsha, we have studied and improved the moisturizing materials, emulsifier and its granule body style, proportion of these two components, and the manufacture technics. And a kind of stable emulsifying body have been produced. Then according to the research of the turtle skin collagen characters, the enzymolysis of the turtle skin collagen has been added to the emulsifying body, and a kind of nutritional emulsifying body and a kind of emulsifying body having functions of suppressing whelk have been produced.These researches provided the theoretic foundations to apply the turtle skin collagen to the cosmetic and to explain the turtles' longevity, and also afforded experimental and technical bases contributing to the further applying of the hydroiysete of turtle skin collagen to a new kind of cosmetic.