A STUDY OF THE PERFORMANCE OF THE POLYVINYLPYRROLIDONE POLYMER PHENOL CAPTURE

Experimental Design of phenol capture

Abstract

The Lowry Method (LM) is daily used in proteic amount determination in different biological samples, however, phenolic components presence is a limiting factor in the method. This paper investigates the LM output about protein amount, in a phenolic matrix, applying a Phenol Capture Method (PCM), from pre-treatment of the sample with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). For this, a factorial experimental design was applied, with a central point and three independent variables. The best conditions suggested by the planning were 75% (w/w) of PVP, 5000 rpm, and 10°C, with a protein content of 87.80 µg.mL^-1 and an experimental error of 22.9%. The PCM is efficient for protein amount quantification by LM, preventing the turbidity of the medium. Assessments using the PCM are still necessary to verify the matrix effect and the response as a function of protein variation (method validation), however, the results obtained allowed a reasonable estimate of the protein content under the conditions usual.