Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

The structure of hair has nutrient values, I need to know if any how long these nutrients last for in hair clipping.
Does the protein/keratin remain in the hair. As hair is dead apart from the root folicle, does all all it goodness disappear?

Hi,

You may find this discussion thread helpful in your research on hair decomposition:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentorin ... 07&start=0

This is another excellent discussion thread with references and comments by a real forensic scientist:
V
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentorin ... 7&start=30

These Google search results may give you other relevant leads:

http://www.google.com/search?q=forensic ... rt=20&sa=N

I am sorry I cannot give you a concise definitive answer to your question. I believe on further investigation you will find that the protein in hair will survive for a very long time after the death of the owener in the right circumstances. However a large number of organisms can eat and digest the hair protein rather quickly if they get access to it.

I hope this helps get you started toward finding the answers you need.

Good luck on the project!

Best regards,

Barrett L Tomlinson

Hi,
Thankyou for your post and links they helped a lot!
Im now trying to determine if hair can be broken down into liquid form and used for its nutrient value. I know it is used as a garden fertilizer; but whether it can be made into a substance more aesthetically pleasing i dont know! And if it can would it lose its goodnes and what equipment etc would be used.
Any ideas would be gratefully received!!
Many thanks,
Sair.

Dear Sair,

This definitely seems like a novel and interest project. As you may already know, hair is made of keratin but collagen as well, which is an incredibly strong and compact triple helix of protein chains. So, to break it down into a liquid state, you need to denature (unfold) all of the protein chains, which can be done in several ways. High temperature, extreme pH, or denaturants like urea or guanidinium HCl can be used to denature the proteins. That being said, hair is made of incredibly tough structural proteins, so some (or all) of these methods may be too extreme to replicate by yourself. Would you be able to obtain access to 8M urea? Otherwise, I fear that trying to raise the temperature would simply cause the hairs to catch on fire...

Hope this helps,
Aaron

Hi-
Here is an article describing the use of an extracted amino acid, L-cysteine, in bread:
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010 ... -your-food

Stephanie

Hi Aaron,
Thanks alot for reply, my assignment is 'HAIR SCIENCE' (Im studying a Foundation Degree of Arts Salon Business Management) Its mainly business but this year we do alot on product science & hair science.
Although the other students are doing projects on areas already covered and easy to research; I want to research and understand something completely different. All experiments would be done at home so access to things may be limited if I knew where to start! athough Im hoping our local Science college will assist!!
I think your right and hair would catch on fire, it would surely sanitize the hair before it got that far which could be useful (i will start testing how long it takes etc before my microwave goes up in smoke )
Knowing what hair is, its lifecycle etc is one thing, but I really want to find out if it has worth after being broken down....if it actually can be broken down that is!
Maybe Im making more work for myself but I always believe if your not learning something whats the point!
Thanks again, any more help would be fantastic...what ive had already has been already!
Apologies if message is confusing...Sair

Hi Stephanie,
Thanks alot for the link, I have read and researched furthur into that though hit a wall.... I find alot on L-Cysteine being used as food enahncer etc and that would surely need to be extracted and broken down to be used as an additive!! But actually finding how its done has left me baffled .
Ill keep on searching and post on here if I find anything interesting,
and thankyou once again Sair

Interesting topic! I would imagine the nutritional value in hair is probably primarily due to its amino acid content. To make a useful nutritional product from it, you'd probably want to chemically break the peptide bonds that connect the amino acids to each other in a chain (thus providing the "primary structure" of the hair proteins), as well as the disulfide bonds that connect various regions of the chains to each other across certain amino acids (stabilizing the "tertiary structure" of the proteins). (You can google "peptide bond" and "disulfide bond" to learn about these kinds of chemical bonds.) The trick is to do this using a chemical approach that does not destroy the amino acids themselves.

Peptide bonds in general are more susceptible to hydrolysis under acidic or basic conditions, so you can break them down by providing a high or low pH and adding heat energy. I remember once when I was a kid I decided to clean my hairbrush (it had a lot of stray hairs stuck in it) by boiling it in vinegar (a low pH solution). As I recall, this treatment managed to dissolve both the hair and the plastic hairbrush! Alternatively, I think strong bases are the active ingredients in hair-removing lotions sold as consumer products, so that's another possible approach.

Here's a message thread about the chemistry used in commercially available hair-dissolving products:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threa ... 40111.html

I also found an article written some time ago by people who were interested in a similar question (I've attached it as a .pdf); I imagine you'll find it to be useful.

Good luck!

Hi all! wanted to say a hige thankyou for all your help! I am currently conducting my own research and experimenting on human hair and whether it can be broken down to liquid form, so any ideas would be much appreaciated.
Best wishes
Sair xx

how to style a synthetic wig? Hair extensions and hairpieces really can help to improve the looking of people and help to change them a lot hair extensions and hairpieces if choosing the right type and right style of hair wigs for you, of course that you will look and become more and more attractive and also buy cheap hair wigs now is easy as you can just get the ideal style that you want online at online shops now. I have just buy me a Synthetic Wigs and it is perfect.