Physico-Chemical Studies on the Skin and Leather of Marin Animals-X
On the Protein in Shark Skin
1954 Volume 20 Issue 5 Pages 411-420
Details
1954 Volume 20 Issue 5 Pages 411-420
The Protein composition of skin which gives an essential knowledge for manufacturing leather or gelatin was studied with the shark skin, an important raw material of marine leather and fish gelatin. The results obtained can be summarized as follows;
(1) The content of globulin-alubumin fraction in the skin of great blue shark(Prionace Glaucus) was somewhat higher than in cattle hide (Cf. Table 1). The mucoid content in the shark was 5-6 times as larg as that in cattle hide (Cf. Tablc 2).
(2) The content of elastin in shark skin was higher than in cattle hide. The elastin content in the dorsal skin of great blue shark was smaller than in the ventral skin. The amount of elastin contained in the dorsal and ventral skins of blue shark (Isuropsis Glauca) was the same as in the ventral skins of great blue shark (Cf. Table 2 and 3).
(3) It has been found that collagen contained in shark skin is only about 13% in contrast with that of cattle hide which was reported to be nearly 30% of the green hide. For this reason, shark skin is not supposed very suitable as a material for manufacturing gelatin.
(4) The amino acid composition of collagen could not be found different between great blue shark and terrestial animal hide when tested after Van Slyke's method (C1. Table 6). It seems that the two-dimensional chromatography of hydrolyzate of shark skin-collagen presented the pattern resemble to that of cattle hide-gelatin (Cf. Figure 3).
