RESEARCH ON STABILITY OF BIOPOLYMERS BY MEANS OF LIGHT SCATTERING TECHNIQUES

Nature and natural systems represent from the beginning of human being magnificent source of both basic raw materials as well as of an inspiration for majority of human driven processes and applications. Biopolymers, representing substances with indispensable role in natural ecosystems, can be listed as the proper example. One of the most important parameter of these substances is their stability, which nowadays still lacks for deeper research. The main aim of this work was to shed a new light on the area of natural substances ongoing aggregation and degradation processes especially in longer time scale. Even slight deviation of these natural substances, which are often used in industrial processes, as final products for distribution to customers or just in long-term research, can cause serious problems (e.g. different yield of product, bad purity or unfavorable property of obtained product, wrong directing of research.). All these effects are of course highly undesirable. This work is mainly focused on the optimization and deeper research on biopolymers stability using light scattering techniques. For purposes of experimental work the system of SEC-MALS was applied as crucial method providing the information about changes in molecular weight and particle size. Results were also compared and correlated with subsequent determination of zeta potential using electrophoretic light scattering. The obtained experimental results showed good correlation between individual light scattering techniques and proved suitability of both presented light scattering methods for the purposes of biopolymers stability research.