Effect of the exposure of gelatin to various environmental conditions on its chemical composition
Résumé
The gelatin is an animal protein that comes from collagen skin or bone. It is used in pharmaceutical industry to make hard capsules. The variations of environmental conditions of production applied to the collagen and therefore gelatin may have an impact on its chemical composition and, as a consequence, on the capsules properties (1). Indeed, previous studies revealed that the gelatin tends to form cross-links between its amino acids in high temperature and humidity conditions or in the presence of chemical compounds as aldehydes (sugars, lipids, oxidations) (2). To understand the impact of the processing on the chemical composition of the gelatin, pig skins gelatin produced under different environmental conditions were analyzed in High-Resolution Magic Angle Spinning NMR (HRMAS). 1D proton NMR spectra were acquired and analyzed using PCA (Principal Components Analysis). The environmental conditions of production were discriminated and the spectral zones contributing to separate them showed differences on the amino acids composition and their structural arrangement. However, the abundance of amino acids masked the possible presence of other molecules. In our conditions, the HRMAS, alone, did not allow identifying all the molecules as the cross-links, sugars or lipids, but suggested the formation of Desmosine-type cross-link under one environmental condition of production.