The Italian textile and apparel manufacturing industry produces more than 30% of the EU garment production and engages nearly 700000.
Besides sheep's wool, the raw fibres used by the fashion textile industry are the fine, noble hairs (speciality fibres) from domestic goats (mohair, cashmere, cashgora), camel and camelids (alpaca, lama, vicuna, guanaco), bovines (yak, musk ox), rabbit (angora). Price differences between the different kind of fibres are considerable and subjected to strong variations. Manufacturing and trading of high quality textiles, at all stage of the industrial processing demand, indeed, exact analytical methods for the assessment of their fibre composition, especially if expensive fibres like cashmere are blended with cheaper fibres such as sheep's wool and yak. With the aim of improving objectivity and precision of the results, several chemical, based on the extraction and analysis of protein fractions, of external and internal lipids and, more recently, of DNA have been extensively investigated in the past by Colleagues of many important institutions. A new approach to the objective identification of the origin of different animal hair fibres, used by the quality-minded textile industry, is the research in progress at the Biella an Genova Sections of theISMAC, with the co-operation of the National Institute for the Research on Cancer of Genova, based on the production of monoclonal antibodies recognizing slight differences in the Intermediate Filament (IFs) protein structure of alpha-keratins. Extensive comparisons of partial amino acid sequences of IFs proteins shown that the size of the central rod domains are absolutely conserved, while the non a helical terminal domains exhibit appreciable species-specific differences, since the biosynthesis proceeds under genetic control. Especially Type I IFs proteins extracted from cashmere show differences from Type I IFs proteins from wool and yak, which are mostly used for cashmere adulteration.
Monoclonal antibodies are proteins from the blood serum, originating in response to an antigen and produced by specific lymphocyte cells; their reactivity is highly specific with the complementary antigen, being able to recognize fixed short amino acid sequences in a protein or in a set of related proteins. "Anticashmere" monoclonal antibodies were produced by immunisation of mice with Type I IF proteins extracted from cashmere purified by 2D preparative electrophoresis; spleen cells from the immunized mouse were put into cellular fusion with immortalized cells from murine-mieloma in order to increase their growth speed and screened by western blot. Preliminary experiments allowed the selection of clones showing specific reactivity against protein from cashmere, that will be tested on textile materials at different processing stages.
This project is financially supported by the Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute of Boston (USA) www.cashmere.org , for the two-years 2001-2003.
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