Team:MADRID UCM HS/Description
Description
What is STAIN?
The STAIN project
The scientific project STAIN (susSTAinable INk) focuses on the manufacture of natural and sustainable inks, or biological inks, which are not currently used due to their high oxidation tendency. Solving this problem will facilitate the production of natural inks that can be used for printing, graphic arts, dyeing textiles or the food industry.
Oxidation takes place when materials are exposed to an oxidizing agent, like oxygen. This agents change the pigments’ molecular structure, affecting their color. Imagine cutting a fresh apple in half, just a few minutes later, you will see that the apple becomes brownish, due to oxidation. Our main goal is thus to maintain the original colors of the inks that we produce by slowing down, or ideally suppressing, the pigments’ oxidation process.
Our first objective: Synthesize the pigments
Pure pigments are obtained by genetically modifying an E.coli to synthesize our color starting from raw flavonoids as precursors.
Our second objective: Stabilizing the pigments
Our approaches to slow down oxidation process and reinforce pigments stability include both physical and chemical antioxidation mechanisms. By mixing our pigments with a chemical cell-free system obtained from yeast, the oxidation process slows down, making our colors more durable and stable. Colors are characterized by using spectrophotometry. This technique gives information about the absorbance of the colors at different wavelengths and thus allows us to have an exhaustive control over the oxidation of our inks.
In addition, our second approach physically encapsulates our pigments in vesicles using microfluidics, so oxygen can’t penetrate and oxidize the samples
