Sock Washing Method – Keep Those Original Colors

An important rule of thumb when doing the laundry is to always separate your whites from your colors. Accidents happen, however, and as a result white socks can often emerge from the washer a lovely tinge of pink. Unlikely though it may sound, help may be on its way from a type of mushroom. Joel Cherry and colleagues have taken an inkcap mushroom peroxidase that can remove stains from clothing and have engineered it so that it works in the hot and soapy environment of a washing machine.

Inkcap mushroom heme peroxidase can decolorize free dyes that have leached out of clothing, but only at normal temperatures. Because conditions are far too harsh inside the washing machine for the natural protein, Cherry and colleagues set out to evolve a new form that can work at high temperatures and under highly alkali conditions. They achieved this by combining two approaches.

In the first, they used the peroxidase's crystal structure to guide them to regions of the enzyme that would likely be stabilized on introduction of mutations into the DNA sequence. In the second, they created mutants by randomly incorporating mutations throughout the DNA encoding the peroxidase molecule. Pools of these mutagenized genes were then combined and shuffled together in yeast (via a process termed genetic recombination) to yield a large number of hybrid genes that could be individually screened for activity under conditions mimicking those inside a washing machine. This allowed the identification of mutants that were greatly improved in heat, alkali, and oxidative stability, and therefore much better suited to use in the wash. One mutant produced by this approach was 174 fold more stable at high temperatures and a 100 fold more resistant to oxidation than the natural inkcap peroxidase.

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About The Author:

Rony Swede is a successful author and regular contributor to http://www.socks-n-socks.com. Having indulged in countless sporting activites over the years, Rony is a self-appointed expert on socks and enjoys sharing his insights with consumers.

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