Determining the Effects of the Serine
Protease Elastase on the Elasticity and Ultimate Tensile Strength of Chicken
Skin
Name: Anthony Malamas
Class: BE 210
The hypothesis of this experiment states that the initiation of elastase digestion in chicken skin will degrade and diminish its supply of elastin, thus resulting in a lower ultimate tensile strength and a higher Young’s modulus in comparison to chicken skin that is untreated with this serine protease.
The main objectives of this lab are:
1. To quantify the amount of elastin that is destroyed by 1 hour of elastase digestion in chicken skin using gel electrophoresis techniques and pixel analysis.
2. To become familiar with using pixel data of electrophoresis blots to quantify the concentration of certain proteins in tissue samples.
3. To utilize tensile testing of chicken skin samples, both treated and untreated with the elastase enzyme, in an attempt to determine how a change in elastin correlates to changes in mechanical properties.
4. To utilize stress-strain equations as well as Matlab poly-curve fitting to determine the Young’s modulus of chicken skin.