Emulsions, the stabilized mixtures of oil and water are the basis of many food and personal care products such as spreads, creams, and pastes. Each product has different requirements and there is a need for emulsifiers that can be tuned, or tailored but are also biocompatible and biodegradable.
Now, Dr. Rein V. Ulijn is among the scientists from the City University of New York's Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) and the University of Strathclyde who discovered a new way to create emulsions with tunable properties, based on very simple biological molecules, as published as the cover article in the journal Advanced Materials.
Ulijn--Director of the ASRC's Nanoscience Initiative--and Strathclyde's Dr. Tell Tuttle used a combination of experiments and simulations to show that dramatically variable oil-in-water emulsions may be produced from tripeptides.
The research group showed the potential to form emulsions with tunable stability by mixing oil, water and designed peptides composed of specific sequences of just three amino acids--the building blocks of proteins which are the structural and functional units of all living systems.
"We are using the same biological building materials that nature uses--but in much simpler ways--to form these short peptides," Ulijn said. "These emulsions are biodegradable to amino acids, which are safe for use in food and drugs. Their sequence-dependent tunability enables us to match specific applications and will allow academic and commercial groups to make stable food products."
It may not sound like much at first glance, but it's very important. To read more, click here.