Objective: Proper hair architecture at the molecular level is an important characteristic of hair that has a healthy look, shine and feel. The human hair shaft is ~90% protein and the overall integrity of this major structural component is an important hallmark of healthy hair. Our goal is to understand hair damage at the molecular level and examine the structural proteins of the hair shaft as maintaining protein structural integrity has an enormous impact on the cosmetic value of the hair shaft.
Methods: Hair protein loss is determined by incubating treated hair in water and measuring the resulting liquor using the Lowry assay. Using the Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) and Electrospray Mass Spectrometry (ESI-MS) techniques along with 2- dimensional electrophoresis we have performed traditional proteomic analysis on hair with certain types of chemical or physical damage.
Results: We have developed robust test methods to detect the amount of protein lost from the hair shaft and have been able to correlate this loss with the level of hair damage, either physical or chemical. Additional analyses of the specific proteins lost from the hair have given us distinct “fingerprints” for each type of insult allowing us to identify specific molecular targets of damage.
Conclusions: Protection of the native hair structure on the protein level is critical to ensure a healthy hair shaft. It is by monitoring changes to the hair proteome that we hope to detect the early stages of hair damage, categorizing it and catching it before its too late. Our approach is giving us a view of hair damage that goes beyond what the consumer can see and are leading us to identify changes to the molecular structure of the hair shaft.