March 16, 2018
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Keio University
Kyushu University
【Key Points】
・When jelly is made in small molds similar to biological cells, it becomes about 10 times harder than regular jelly.
・The reason for this hardening is that the lipid membrane covering the mold causes a significant change in the structure of the proteins that make up the jelly.
・This finding contributes to the functional control of products such as foods, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics that use small jellies.
A research group—including Tenure-track Associate Professor Miho Yanagisawa, graduate student Atsushi Sakai, and Associate Professor Yoshihiro Murayama from the Department of Applied Physics, Graduate School of Engineering at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology; Senior Assistant Professor Kei Fujiwara from the Department of Biosciences and Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology at Keio University; and Professor Satoru Kidoaki from the Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering at Kyushu University—has created microscopic jelly spheres on a scale of one-hundredth of a millimeter using cell-like molds. By measuring the hardness of these small jellies, they discovered that the hardness of the jelly changes significantly depending on the size of the mold used during gelation. They also found that this change in hardness is due to a structural change in the gelatin, the raw material of the jelly, caused by the lipid membrane covering the mold during gelation. By applying these findings to the development of foods, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics that use microscopic jellies, further functional control is expected. Furthermore, since cells have a similar structure—a microscale gel enclosed by a membrane composed mainly of lipids—these results are expected to contribute to the future elucidation of the mechanical properties and functions of living cells.
Please see below for the full press release.