Bleaching

The DMK approach requires a closed system – we believe that you can’t date an open system. Bleaching removes contamination and any exposed (open system) amino acids. In theory bleaching should reduce concentration, and increase the DMK (unless there is some bacterial contamination); it does sometimes. We ocassionally run non-bleached samples so that direct comparison can be made with earlier studies.

Schematic of the intra-crystalline fraction