Assessing Hyaluronan’s Contribution to
the Anisotropic Property of Chicken Skin
Name: Jessie
Siedelman
Class: BE 210
The purpose of this experiment is to determine if the hyaluronan-collagen interaction is responsible for skin’s anisotropic characteristics. One group of chicken skins will be treated with a hyaluronidase, which will degrade the hyaluronan that holds the collagen in its natural orientation, while the other set of skin is left untreated. The treated skin should model the affects of UV radiation, which has been shown to damage the hyaluronan in the skin (Stark 2006), and thus allow for further investigation of the effects that exposure to UV radiation has on the mechanical properties of skin. The tensile properties of both sets of skins parallel and perpendicular to the bone will be evaluated via uniaxial tension testing. Specifically under investigation is whether the chicken skins treated with hyaluronidase show a statistically significant difference in the elastic modulus when the skin is stretched uniaxially either parallel or perpendicular to the bone. The untreated chicken skin should show a statistically significant difference in the elastic modulus between uniaxial tension testing parallel and perpendicular to the bone. Through this examination, a greater understanding of the underlying structures of skin and how this network of molecules contributes to the overall organization of the skin should be established. In addition, the experiment aims to introduce the high degree of specificity associated with enzymes. Moreover, the experiment allows for continued familiarization of tensile testing applications as well as tissue harvesting. It is hypothesized that the treated skin will exhibit isotropic tensile properties while the untreated skin will exhibit anisotropic tensile properties.