Department of Microstructure and Mechanics of Biomaterials

Research

The main direction of the researches in the Biochemistry Laboratory is monitoring of changes in plant tissues (especially fruit and vegetables) under an influence of different external and internal factors. Many standard analysis are performed in order to characterization of the materials, i.e. dry mass determination, soluble solids, titrable  acidity, pH, starch concentration, etc. The analysis are performed according to respective ISO and Polish standards. Besides standard analysis, chemical composition of cell walls are determined in the Laboratory, mainly galacturonic acid, calcium, total nitrogen by means of flow continuous analysis.

The structural analysis are performed by means of two complementary spectroscopy systems: FT IR and FT Raman.  Spectra of all substances are possible to obtain because of complete set of accessories: lyophilisator,  press, vacuum oven. FT IR spectrometer is equipped in ATR which enables recording of spectrum without making tablets with KBr. Raman spectrometer with 1064 nm Nd:YVO laser has wide application in biological samples.

The researches in the Laboratory are dedicated mainly to cell wall polysaccharides, their qualitative and quantitative analysis and molecular and structural characterization.

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