Is protein degrade by UV ?

[afaaqb2w]

Hi!!!
I,m doing a research in a protein extraction!! I just going to expose UV light to medium for the sterilization purposes.Will it work? and Is protein degrade by UV?

[jonmoulton]

It will depend on the wavelength of the UV light and its intensity. Aromatic amino acids, such as tyrosine, can absorb shorter-wavelength UV and become reactive. I found a lot of relevant information by searching the keyword group "UV tyrosine reactivity photochemistry" in Google -- try that.

If you are using UV to sterilize, you are trying to damage/kill microbes by messing with their proteins and nucleic acids. Yes, that can also mess with your analyte protein.

[afaaqb2w]

thank u for the replay..
U mean that microbes killed by UV by denaturing their protein also... I found some article say that UV denature the DNA therefore the microbes (mostly Bacteria) couldn't replicate..

[JackBean]

Yeah, it will be bigger problems DNA damage for the microbes, because thymidine forms dimers etc.
However, proteins get damaged as well, they can get cross-linked by UV.