Experimental Investigation on the Bioprotective Role of Trehalose on Glutamine Solutions by Infrared Spectroscopy

Abstract

Glutamine plays a significant role in several basic metabolic processes and is an important regulator of heat shock protein response. The present work is focused on the analysis of the thermal response of aqueous solutions of Glutamine and aqueous solutions of Glutamine in the presence of Trehalose by means of infrared absorption technique. The performed study shows how in the case of a multicomponent system, characterized by a huge number of spectral contributions whose assignment are questionable, the Spectral Distance (SD) and the Cross Wavelet Correlation (XWT) approaches are able to furnish explanatory parameters that can characterize the variations in the spectra behaviour, which is an efficient tool for quantitative comparisons. With this purpose, the analysis has been performed by evaluating the SD and the XWT parameters for the whole investigated spectral range, i.e., 4000–400 cm−1, for scans collected as a function of temperature in the range 20 °C ÷ 60 °C both for Glutamine/Water compounds and for Glutamine /Water/Trehalose mixtures. By means of these analyses, it is found that in aqueous solutions of Glutamine, with respect to aqueous solutions of Glutamine in the presence of Trehalose, the SD and XWT temperature trends follow a linear behaviour where the angular coefficient for Glutamine /Water/Trehalose compounds are lower than that of the Glutamine-Water system in both cases. The obtained findings suggest that Trehalose stabilizes Glutamine against heat treatment.

Stabilization Effects Induced by Trehalose on Creatine Aqueous Solutions Investigated by Infrared Spectroscopy

“…In order to detect quantitative differences between the binary and the ternary investigated systems, the spectra integrated areas have been calculated for the spectral range 2800–3700 cm −1 . Figure 5 a (on the left) reports the calculated integrated area values of the OH-stretching region, i.e., 2800–3700 cm −1 , for all the investigated spectra as a function of time for the creatine aqueous solution; while Figure 5 b (on the right) shows the integrated area values of the OH-stretching region versus time for the creatine aqueous solution in the presence of trehalose [ 42 , 44 ].…”

“…Trehalose presents physical–chemical properties different from the other homologous disaccharides, which make it used not only in the food industry but also in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, as well as in “energy” drinks or foods for athletes, as an additive protective agent for baker’s yeasts, or as a rust inhibitor [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ].…”