Dynamic light-scattering monitoring of a transient biopolymer gel

We performed dynamic light-scattering (DLS) monitoring and a rheological study to characterize the formation and destruction of a transient (limited lifetime) gel formed from the biopolymers chitosan and gelatin. Gel formation, initiated by the enzyme tyrosinase, is followed by spontaneous gel breakage. Our DLS results demonstrate that this material passes through five stages in which the gel forms, consolidates, "lives", softens, and eventually breaks. We speculate that the existence of the transient gel is caused by a competition between two processes: a fast-rate chemical reaction leading to formation of a branched-copolymer network and a slow-rate diffusion-like rearrangement of the gelatin branches resulting in eventual gel breakage. Despite a dramatic difference in the characteristic times of the gel formation (t(g)) and gel breakage (t(b))-the ratio t(b)/t(g), is of the order 10(3)-DLS has revealed an intrinsic monitoring-time symmetry in the formation and destruction of the gel provided that a proper physical choice of the reduced temporal scale is used. In this scale the slow-mode relaxation time for both sides of the process, gel formation and gel destruction, exhibits a power law in the spirit of percolation theory. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.