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Degradation and regeneration of feather keratin in NMMO solution

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Abstract

Chicken feather, a potential source of keratin, is often disposed as waste material. Although some methods, i.e., hydrolysis, reduction, and oxidation, have been developed to isolate keratin for composites, it has been limited due to the rising environmental concerns. In this work, a green solvent N-methylmorpholine N-oxide (NMMO) was used to extract keratin from chicken feather waste. Eighty-nine percent of keratin was extracted using 75% NMMO solution. However, the result from size exclusion HPLC showed that most of the keratin degraded into polypeptide with molecular weight of 2189 and only 25.3% regenerated keratin was obtained with molecular weight of 14,485. Analysis of amino acid composition showed a severe damage to the disulfide bonds in keratin during the extraction procedure. Oxidization had an important effect on the reconstitution of the disulfide bonds, which formed a stable three-dimensional net structure in the regenerated keratins. Besides, Raman spectra, NMR, FT-IR, XRD, and TGA were used to characterize the properties of regenerated keratin and raw chicken feather. In the end, a possible mechanism was proposed based on the results.

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Acknowledgments

The authors greatly acknowledge the financial support from the Enterprise University Research Prospective Program, Jiangsu Province (No. BY2016022-08) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. JUSRP51723B and JUSRP11502). Yang also appreciates USDA (National Agriculture and Food Initiative, Hatch Act, Multistate Research Project S-1054 (NEB37-037)) and Agricultural Research Division at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for their support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Eco-Textiles, Ministry of Education, College of textile and clothing, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, 214122, China

    Bomou Ma, Qisong Sun, Jing Yang, Jakpa Wizi & Xiuliang Hou

  2. Department of Textiles, Merchandising & Fashion Design, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, 234, HECO Building, Lincoln, NE, 68583-0802, USA

    Yiqi Yang

  3. Department of Biological Systems Engineering, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, 234, HECO Building, Lincoln, NE, 68583-0802, USA

    Yiqi Yang

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  1. Bomou Ma
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  2. Qisong Sun
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  3. Jing Yang
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  4. Jakpa Wizi
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  5. Xiuliang Hou
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  6. Yiqi Yang
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Correspondence to Bomou Ma or Yiqi Yang.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues

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Ma, B., Sun, Q., Yang, J. et al. Degradation and regeneration of feather keratin in NMMO solution. Environ Sci Pollut Res 24, 17711–17718 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-9410-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-9410-x

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