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Team:ITB Indonesia/Data
From 2014.igem.org
Data
Ethylene Glycol Assay using Chromic Acid
Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is a plastic that is a polymer of ethylene terephthalate (C10H8O4) units (Sarker et al., 2010). Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) can be degrade via limited enzymatic hydrolysis of the ester bond of the polymer backbone, one enzyme that have been assesed for this purpose is cutinase (Ribitsch et al., 2012). When polyethylene terephthalate degraded, it will produce terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol (Venkatachalam et al., 2012). Ethylene glycol is one of alcohol compound. Oxidation of alcohols by strong oxidants such as chromic acid (K2Cr2O7) in suphuric acid(H2SO4) is possible, but differs depending on the degree of alcohol. If a reaction has occurred using chromic acid in sulphuric acid, there is a color change from orange to green. In our project we use chromic acid to detect ethylene glycol as product of the PET degradation by LC cutinase enzyme.
