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amine vapors
Amine vapors emerge from all dead bodies
Within a few hours a deceased body starts to produce amine vapors in the body's tissues. These include putrescine (1,4-diaminobutane) and cadaverine (1,5-diaminopentane). These vapors will react with a carbohydrate material like that found on the Shroud as an ultrathin coating on some of the fibers. The chemical reaction that takes place is called a Maillard reaction. A Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between an amino acid and a reducing sugar, sometimes requiring the addition of heat. Like caramelization, it is a form of non-enzymatic browning. The reactive carbonyl group of the sugar interacts with the nucleophilic amino group of the amino acid. The process produces numerous odor and flavor molecules. Hundreds of flavoring compounds can be produced. The Maillard reaction is essential to the artificial flavoring industry. The Maillard reaction is also significant in that it produces a yellowing or browning color. An example is artificial sun tanning lotion. In the production of dark beer, the color comes from a Maillard reaction that takes place during brewing. The reaction is named after the chemist Louis-Camille Maillard who investigated it in the 20th century. A Maillard reaction is significant in Shroud of Turin research because it is one of the leading hypotheses for image formation. It has been proposed that a chemical reaction occurred that selectively changed the carbohydrate coating of starch fractions and sugars that coated some of the Shroud's fibers. The amine gases produced by a dead body are extremely reactive chemically. This will produce the color we see in the carbohydrate layer. The thin coating, visible with phase-contrast microscopy, is extremely thin. On the Shroud the carbohydrate coating has been observed to be approximately 180 to 600 nanometers thick. This is in the range of the wavelengths of visible lights. Where the coating is imaged (brown and demonstrably part of the visible image), that is where it is chemically changed, it is thinner. This is chemically expected. It is important to note that the cellulose fibers that host the carbohydrate layers are not colored. It is also important to note that the carbohydrate layer can be dissolved with diimide or stripped away with an adhesive leaving clear, colorless fiber. This is true whether the layer has undergone a color-producing color change or not. Chemist Ray Rogers describes the layers, composed of a complex mixture of conjugated systems: There is absolutely no doubt that the image color exists in a thin layer on the surface of image fibers. The layer is amorphous, and it seems to have an index of refraction relatively close to that of the linen fiber. The layer is quite brittle, and many flakes of the color have flaked off of the fibers. Colorless cellulose can be seen where image color has flaked off. The flakes can be seen and identified on the adhesive of sampling tapes. The flakes have the chemical properties of the intact image color on the fibers.
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