Extraction and Characterization of Chitin and Chitosan from
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Published on: February 27, 2021
Amirhossen Nafary1, Seyed Amin Mousavi Nezhad1, Shirin Jalili1,2
1Research Center for Life and Health Sciences and Biotechnology of the Police, Directorate of Health, Rescue and Treatment, Police Headquarter, Tehran, Iran.
Background:
Chitin and chitosan are utilized in many industries such as pharmacy, biotechnology, and medicine. The mealworm beetle, Tenebrio Molitor, is simply breaded and does not require a vast production space.
Materials And Methods:
In this study, we extracted chitin and chitosan using two different methods from Tenebrio Molitor adult beetles. Then we studied their physical and chemical properties along with their antibacterial effect.
Results:
Using two new methods we extracted 13, 3%, and 17.7% chitin from the dry mealworm beetle which was higher than in previous studies. The chitosan yield of the extracted chitin was 78.26% and 76.43%, respectively. The observed FTIR peaks for chitin and chitosan in this study were in accordance with the characteristic peaks. The degree of acetylation of chitin was 95.09% and 92.55% and the degree of deacetylation was 75.84%, and 72.6% from the first and second methods, respectively. The extracted chitosan also showed an antibacterial effect against Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Conclusions:
Our study demonstrated that chitin and chitosan extracted from adult mealworm beetles could be considered as a replacement for commercial chitosan and needs further studies.
