Small angle X-ray study of cellulose macromolecules produced by tunicates and bacteria.

The organisation of poly-glucan chains into cellulose macromolecular microfibrils has been studied using small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). Three kinds of cellulose - bacterial cellulose (BC), nata-de-coco (NdC) (food grade bacterial cellulose) and tunicate cellulose (TC) have been investigated. Given the large ambiguity in literature on the microfibril dimensions owing to different methods and data analysis strategies, a method to extract dimensions of cellulose microfibrils using SAXS has been shown, which was found to be consistent across all the samples. The results have been verified with microscopy data. Two populations of microfibrils with different cross-section dimensions were identified. The dimensions of the rectangular cross-sections of BC were found to be 32nm by 16nm and 21nm by 10nm. The dimensions for NdC were calculated to be 25nm×8nm and 14nm×6nm and that for TC were determined to be 25nm×10nm and 15nm×8nm.