Effects of hydroxy compounds on gel formation of gelatin

 Network formation of gelatin gel is known to consist of three-dimensionally cross-linked triple helices among polypeptide chains. The effects of added low molecular weight mono-ols, diols and polyols on the higher-order structure formation of gelatin chains were investigated using the following measurements: melting temperature, viscoelasticity and spin-lattice relaxation time (T ₁) of H¹⁷ ₂O of gels, and circular dichroism spectra of diluted gelatin solutions. Furthermore, hydration behaviors of these hydroxy compounds were evaluated from the dynamic hydration numbers (n _DHN) derived from T ₁ of H¹⁷ ₂O in the solutions. It was found that network structures of gelatin gels containing hydoxy compounds were influenced by the number and position of hydroxyl groups as well as the number of carbon atoms of these coexisting compounds. The effect of hydroxyl groups of hydroxy compounds was considered to stabilize the helices among gelatin chains. Especially, the addition of polyols with large number of hydroxyl groups increased the number of cross-linking junctions in the gel networks, which consist of the aggregation among the helices. On the contrary, the effect of carbon atoms of hydroxy compounds is to disturb the formation of the helices and the aggregation among the helices. Received: 18 April 1996/Accepted: 23 July 1996