Transglutaminase In Injury Repair And Reduce Wool Fiber

Transglutaminase , which is a kind of biocatalyst, can catalyze the acyl transfer reaction and form ε (γ -glutamyl)lysine bonds between the γ - carboxyamide group of a peptide-bound glutaminyl residue (acyl donors ) and the ε -amino group of a peptide-bound lysyl residue. The crosslinking between protein macromolecules via intra or inter ε ( γ -glutamyl)lysine isodipeptide bridges leads to increasing stability of the protein and increasing resistance to chemicals.The wool fiber and fabrics would be unavoidably damaged and performance declined in the processing, especially in the dyeing and finishing processing such as carbonization, shrinking-resistant treatment, dyeing and so on. In this paper microbial transglutaminase was used to keep and improve the performance of wool fiber and fabric and special animal fibers, which may be seriously damaged in the processing.In the research, the conditions of microbial transglutaminase treating wool fiber were investigated including temperature, pH, dosage and treating time first. As a result perfect performance were attained with dosage of microbial transglutaminase being 5%, temperature 50℃ and pH 7.0 for one hour. Mechanism of transglutaminase treatment was preliminary studied through comparing remediation effect of fiber tensile strength treated by transglutaminase, fibers in the experiment gradationally damaged with DCCA and protease Savinase 16XL. The tensile strength and elongation at break of wool fabric treated by microbial transglutaminase were enhanced and improved and the crease recovery angles were increased remarkably. The dosage of microbial transglutaminase was increased up to 7% because of high fabric tightness.The ability of damage-resistance (hydrolyze-resistance) of fiber and fabric treated with microbial transglutaminase was also studied in this paper. The result indicated that the ability of damage-resistance was improved; the loss of weight was decreased and mechanical properties kept well when fiber and fabric were treated with protease or dyed with acid dyes at high temperature.The application of microbial transglutaminase on other animal fibers such as bleached grey cashmere, camel's hair and modified sheep wool, was discussed and mechanical properties of those fibers were improved respectively. In addition, the effect of microbial transglutaminase on sericin fixing was studied and the degumming rate of silk was dropped in sodium carbonate solution. When the glutin treated withmicrobial transglutaminase, the thermal endurance and alkali resistance was improved.As an energy-save and biotechnocal method, the use of the protein-crosslinking enzyme microbial transglutammase in the processing of wool or other animal hair to maintain and repair mechanical properties, offers a novel way for the textile processing. Meanwhile the application of enzyme in the textile is broadly promoted.