Acid hydrolysis behaviour of microbial cellulose II

Abstract

A mutant strain of Acetobacter xylinum produces cellulose of anomalous band-like form (‘native band’), and this material has been found to be cellulose II, presumably having a folded-chain structure (according to recent work by Kuga et al.). In addition to the previous results of electron diffraction, X-ray analysis showed that this band material was composed of virtually pure cellulose II. We have studied the acid hydrolysis behaviour of this material to obtain additional evidence for the proposed structure. When hydrolysed with 1 N hydrochloric acid at 100°C, the degree of polymerization (DP) of the material decreased rapidly from 322 (DPw/DPn = 3.83) to 18.3 (DPw/DPn = 1.19). The latter value (levelling-off DP) corresponds to the observed width (10 nm) of strand-like constituents of the band material. The sample dissolved in and regenerated from 8.75% aqueous sodium hydroxide lost its original characteristic morphology and became irregular-shaped agglomerates. The leveling-off DP of this regenerated sample was 55.2 (DPw/DPn = 2.53), a typical value for common regenerated celluloses. These findings as a whole strongly suggest that the cellulose molecules in the native band are selectively cleaved at sharply folded parts by acid, producing fragments of the length of folding periodicity.