In the afternoon, we went to meet LiHong in the Biomaterial Lab located at the basement of MSE building. She is working on a project to use amino acids to synthesis materials. Her work is on the polymerisation of Serine and Tyrorine with varying composition.
The process of polymerisation of proteins is similar to our A level syllabus where we learnt how amino acids chain up together using a peptide bond between the C terminal and the N terminal.
Firstly, a solution was placed within the Rotary Evaporator. Pressure was decreased so that water can be boiled off and removed at roughly 50 degrees Celsius. The solvent (in this case, water) is being removed so that residue can be obtained. The end product of this procedure is a concentrated glue like substance.
Rotary Evaporator
Next, she continued to precipitate out the amino acids from the solution using Hexine. In the picture below, Hexene is placed in a glass bottle with the drying agent.
Hexene with Drying Agent to Remove Water
However, the yield of precipitate using Hexine to precipitate out the amino acid is very low. She then tried using deionised water. Fortunately a clear precipitate was obtained using deionised water. She proceeded to use the whole beaker of the concentrated solution and placed it in a freezer at 4 degrees Celsius.
Precipitation in Progress
After the amino acids were precipitated, LiHong removed the excess water in the beaker. She placed the beaker containing the viscous amino acid into a vacuum oven to obtain the final reactant for polymerisation,
Her previous work in progress:
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