Fernandez-Saiz P, Lagaron J M, Hernandez-Muñoz P, Ocio M J
Novel Materials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (IATA), CSIC, Apartado de correos, 73, 46100 Burjassot, Valencia, Spain.
Int J Food Microbiol. 2008 May 10;124(1):13-20. doi: 10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2007.12.019. Epub 2007 Dec 31.
The biocide properties of chitosan-based materials have been known for many years. However, typical antimicrobial formulations of chitosan, mostly chitosonium salts, are known to be very water sensitive materials which may impair their use in many application fields such as food packaging or food coating applications. This first work reports on the development and characterization of the antimicrobial properties of novel fully renewable blends of chitosan with more water-resistant gliadin proteins isolated from wheat gluten. Chitosan release to the nutrient broth from a wide range of blends was studied making use of the ninhydrin method. The results indicated that both pure chitosan and its blends with gliadins presented significant antimicrobial activity, which increased with increasing the amount of chitosan in the composite formulation as expected. The gliadins-chitosan blends showed good transparency and film-forming properties and better water resistance than pure chitosan. The release tests revealed that dissolution of the biocide glucosamine groups, i.e. the chitosan water soluble fractions, also increased with the amount of chitosan present in the formulation. The release of these groups was for the first time directly correlated with the antimicrobial properties exhibited by the blends. Thus, incorporation of chitosan into an insoluble biopolymer matrix was revealed as a very feasible strategy to generate novel chitosan-based antimicrobial materials with potential advantages, for instance active food packaging applications.
壳聚糖基材料的杀菌特性已为人所知多年。然而，壳聚糖的典型抗菌配方，主要是壳聚糖盐，是众所周知的对水非常敏感的材料，这可能会影响它们在许多应用领域的使用，如食品包装或食品涂层应用。这项首次研究报告了新型完全可再生的壳聚糖与从小麦面筋中分离出的更耐水的麦醇溶蛋白混合物的抗菌特性的开发和表征。利用茚三酮法研究了多种混合物中壳聚糖向营养肉汤中的释放情况。结果表明，纯壳聚糖及其与麦醇溶蛋白的混合物均表现出显著的抗菌活性，正如预期的那样，随着复合配方中壳聚糖含量的增加，抗菌活性增强。麦醇溶蛋白-壳聚糖混合物表现出良好的透明度和成膜性能，并且比纯壳聚糖具有更好的耐水性。释放测试表明，杀菌剂葡萄糖胺基团（即壳聚糖的水溶性部分）的溶解也随着配方中壳聚糖含量的增加而增加。这些基团的释放首次与混合物表现出的抗菌特性直接相关。因此，将壳聚糖掺入不溶性生物聚合物基质中被证明是一种非常可行的策略，以生产具有潜在优势的新型壳聚糖基抗菌材料，例如用于活性食品包装应用。
