How does protein denaturation speed change with temperature? [closed]








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So this is something that I had been wondering since middle school. We "roughly" know that protein denaturation occurs above a temperature of 72 degrees Celsius, and is the reason why it is usually not recommended to boil milk that has already been pasteurized. My question is, what is the relation between the speed of protein denaturing and the temperature at which it is observed? For example, does denaturing at 72 degrees occur twice as slowly as denaturing at 144 degrees assuming all other conditions remain unchanged? Also, what is the standard metric for measuring the speed of protein denaturing? Any links to published research are highly appreciated. Please note that I'm not looking for a precise answer, I'm looking at a rough idea on a high-level that can be explained to people that have no experience towards the field of biochemistry.




Thinking about rates of chemical processes more broadly, since that underlies your question, a reaction will not be twice as fast at 144 degrees C as at 72 - it will commonly be much faster. Rate of reaction depends exponentially, not linearly, on temperature - there’s a good explanation at <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_rate> . It mentions an oft-quoted rule of thumb that for many reactions, for every 10 degree Celsius rise in temperature, reaction rate doubles. If denaturation of proteins obey this rough approximation, then the rate at 82 degrees would be double that at 72.


There’s another common misconception in your question: 144 degrees Celsius is not double 72 degrees. The choice of the freezing point of water as zero degrees Celsius is arbitrary, and doesn’t tell us anything about the laws of nature. If you more appropriately use Kelvins as your unit of temperature (where 0 Kelvin is -273 degrees Celsius - absolute zero, the lowest possible temperature), then 72 degrees Celsius=345 Kelvin so doubling the temperature would give 690 Kelvin = 417 degrees Celsius!


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