Photon transmission study on conformational ordering of iota-carrageenan in CaCl2 solution

Abstract

Coil-to-double helix (c-h) and double helix-to-dimer (h-d) phase transitions of iota-carrageenan in CaCl2 solution upon cooling were studied using photon transmission technique. Photon transmission intensity, I-iota r was monitored against temperature to determine the (c-h) and (h-d) transition temperatures (T-ch and T-hd) and activation energies (Delta E-ch and Delta E-hd). An extra dimer-to-dimer (d-d) transition was also observed during cooling at low temperature region. However, upon heating dimers disappear to double helices by making dimer-to-double helix (d-h) transition. Further heating resulted double helix-to-coil (h-c) transition at high temperature region. T-dh and T-ch temperatures and Delta E-dh and Delta E-hc activation energies were also determined. It was observed that T-hc and T-ch temperatures and Delta E-dh and Delta E-hd activation energies do not effected by carrageenan content. However, T-hd, T-dh and T-dd temperatures and Delta E-ch and Delta E-hc activation energies were found to be strongly correlated to the carrageenan content in the system.