HOW AND WHERE DOES WAXES PRODUCED FROM?

Search for the word “wax” on the internet and you will come up with everything from candles to crayons, floor wax, and much more. You will even get to see life-size reproductions of famous people using wax or read about its use in physiotherapy.

But what is wax actually made of? What are its properties? How are they made by living organisms?

WHAT’s IN WAX?

Wax is a term that applies to a large variety of substances that can come from natural or man-made sources. They are not single substances; rather, think of them as long-chain fatty acids linked to other particles. The composition of what they call “other substances” depends on the source. Waxes are generally solid at biological temperatures. They are completely water-insoluble. This strongly hydrophobic nature that lends water repellent properties to the materials or part of living organisms where the wax is found.

• NATURAL WAX

What is common among the insect’s wings, bird’s feather, and banana leaves? They all seem to repel water, right? They don’t get wet. For the plant, this can be traced to the presence of waxy cuticles-an adaptation that prevents water loss from the upper surface of the leaf while still enabling the capture of energy from sunlight.

For insects, the waxy covering around their bodies and on their wings also prevents desiccation or drying up. For birds, the waxy esters secreted by the uropygial or preen glands are responsible for giving the feathers their waterproof appearance. The secretion of wax in a living organism is, therefore, a matter of necessity as what you will learn from this article.

There are many other plants and animals that secrete waxy substances. Perhaps the ones that ring a bell would be the whales and bees for animals, and carnauba and jojoba for plants. There are ten components of wax such as n-alkanes, secondary alcohols, ketones, diketones, hydroxyl acids, dicarboxylic acids, alkanoic acids, aldehydes, primary alcohols, and monoesters.

• ANIMAL SOURCES

Truth be known, whales are not the only marine animals that produce wax. Besides whales, fish and other marine organisms have been found to store wax esters in their tissues. Fish roe, for instance, contains wax esters. For a long time, the sperm whale was a major source of oil or spermaceti used as lubricant or base in the cosmetic industry. No other marine animal can, however, beat the sperm whales record: A 15-meter sperm whale could yield at least 3 tons of spermaceti from its frontal lobe alone and at most another ton from its adipose tissues or blubber. Spermaceti contains wax esters, which is 76 percent and 23 percent of triacylglycerol. Whales store a lot of spermaceti because these substances are used for energy generation, insulation, buoyancy, and even echolocation. It’s a good thing alternative source for spermaceti has been found, as the whale has to be killed first before spermaceti can be harvested.

Bees, on the other hand, don’t have to be exterminated just to get the wax they made. To these insects, wax production is all part of ensuring there is enough food for the colony. Fresh from foraging nectar, the young worker bees whose stomachs are still full of honey begin their next task: that of building the honey depot. After a day of rest, the young bees begin secreting small wax platelets courtesy of eight wax glands on the underside of their abdomens. The busy bees keep on task masticating, chewing, and remixing wax with their saliva until they finally come up with their masterpiece-the honeycomb structures used for storing honey. To seal honey in, they again produce wax and combine it with propolis. Wax is also secreted and combined with propolis to repair and seal off the hive to invaders. Harvesting honey often mean harvesting the honeycomb, too. Beekeepers process honey into food products, while the honeycomb is processed for beeswax. Frame hive beekeeping produces wax almost exclusively from the cap and top part of the honey cells.

About 70 to 80 percent of the total weight of beeswax consists of palmitate, palmitoleate, hydroxypalmitate, and oleate esters of long-chain alcohols. It is the most widely used materials among bee products because it is saponifiable and emulsifiable-properties, which can be traced to its free fatty acids, diols, and hydroxy acid content.

• PLANT WAX SOURCE

The hardest and the one with the highest melting point among the natural waxes is the wax that comes from the Brazilian palm tree, Copernicia prunifera Cerifera, called carnauba wax, dubbed the “queen of waxes.” This wax contains mainly fatty esters, which is 80 to 85 percent, 10 to 15 percent of free alcohols, 3 to 6 percent of acids, and hydrocarbons of 1 to 3 percent. It also contains esterified fatty di-alcohols, hydroxylated fatty acids, and cinnamic acid.

Each tree yields about 100 grams of wax in a year, which is processed and mixed with beeswax to make not only various polishes for shoes, floor, and furniture but also for cosmetics like lipsticks and creams. It is also for food (glazes for candies, gums, and fruit coatings). It is used also in the paper industry for paper coating.

Another plant source that you may have heard of from shampoo ads on TV is the jojoba oil. Produced by pressing the seeds of the jojoba tree Simmondsia Chinensis, this source of wax has a much lower melting point of about 7 degrees Celsius and is ordinarily fluid at room temperature, unlike carnauba. Jojoba oil serves as spermaceti replacement and is largely used in cosmetic applications like soaps, shampoos, skin creams, and sunscreen oils. Insulfonated or hydrogenated oil form is used in industries as lubricant, polishes, candles, and coatings.

Chemists have pinpointed two pathways by which plants make waxes. Production begins in the epidermal cells particularly in the stroma of plastids. Here, the saturated, very long chains of fatty acids are formed into a fatty acid synthase complex, which again goes through a series of chemical reactions before entering either pathway.

After synthesis, the wax components are then exported from the plastids passing through the endoplasmic reticulum to the plasma membrane and through the cell wall of plants. These particles must then pass into the cutin layer, which provides a matrix within an upon which the waxes are deposited.

Chemists have also found out that wax production at the cellular level is very much similar to prokaryotes, plants, and animals. Would it be far-fetched to say that these living organisms may have similar uses of wax in their everyday lives?

That is how and where all the waxes we are using produced. It is a certainly lengthy process and is not easily be manufactured unless there arePL many sources to be used.