Skin Deterioration and Tensile Strength
Name: Giann Gorospe
Class: BE 210
This lab will reinforce techniques in tensile strength testing and acid-base titrations. It will also provide more experience implementing machines like the Instron and pH meter. More specifically, we will learn about one technique with which scientists denature proteins and its effects on a given biological system. If these effects include conformational changes, we will need to consider how these effects create additional challenges in loading, experimentation, and analysis.
Our concentration will be on the failure strength of chicken skin. We hypothesize that failure strength of the modified chicken skins will be significantly lower (p < 0.05, paired one-tail t-test) than that of the normal chicken skin which is our control. This is because the denatured keratin should not be able to effectively remain cross-linked to the collagen fibers, and thus the skin should have reduced strength. Other properties that could be tested for a comparable relation are Young’s modulus and ultimate strength. Ultimate strength should be reduced by similar reasoning to failure strength. Young’s modulus should be reduced in these altered skins because flexibility is lost.