Cutinase promotes dry esterification of cotton cellulose

Cutinase from Thermobifida fusca was used to esterify the hydroxyl groups of cellulose with the fatty acids from triolein. Cutinase and triolein were pre-adsorbed on cotton and the reaction proceeded in a dry state during 48 hours at 35ºC. The cutinase-catalyzed esterification of the surface of cotton fabric resulted in the linkage of the oleate groups to the glycoside units of cotton cellulose. The superficial modification was confirmed by performing ATR-FTIR on treated cotton samples and by MALDI-TOF analysis of the liquors from the treatment of the esterified cotton with a crude cellulase mixture. Modified cotton fabric also showed a significant increase of hydrophobicity. This work proposes a novel bio-based approach to obtain hydrophobic cotton. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

This work is supported by Opening Project of National Engineering Laboratory for Modern Silk (Grant No. KJS1312); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31201134 and No. 31470509); the Jiangsu Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.BK2012112), the Industry-academic Joint Technological Prospective Fund Project of Jiangsu Province (Grant No.BY2013015-24) and the Graduate Funding Program of Jiangnan University for Overseas Study.