Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Boeretang 200, 2400 Mol, Belgium.
Carbohydr Res. 2020 Feb;488:107899. doi: 10.1016/j.carres.2019.107899. Epub 2019 Dec 23.
Insects are considered a promising alternative protein source for food and feed, but contain significant amounts of chitin, often undesirable due to indigestibility, disagreeable texture and negative effect on nutrients intake. Fractionation strategies are thus increasingly being applied to isolate and valorize chitin separately. The analysis of chitin generally requires an intensive pretreatment to remove impurities, and derivatization to generate sufficient detector response. In this work, a liquid chromatography method, without pretreatment nor derivatization, was developed for the simultaneous determination of chitin content and degree of acetylation in non-purified samples of black soldier fly (BSF) larvae. The method is found to be more suitable, compared to traditional methods, for assessing high degrees of acetylation. For the first time, the degree of acetylation of BSF chitin (81 ± 2%) is reported. Additionally, the chitin content of BSF soft tissues is estimated at approximately 20% of the total chitin content (8.5 ± 0.1%).
昆虫被认为是有前途的食物和饲料用蛋白质替代来源，但它们含有大量的几丁质，由于难以消化、口感不佳以及对营养物质摄入的负面影响，通常不受欢迎。因此，分离策略越来越多地被应用于分离和增值几丁质。分析几丁质通常需要进行密集的预处理以去除杂质，并进行衍生化以产生足够的检测器响应。在这项工作中，开发了一种无需预处理和衍生化的液相色谱法，用于同时测定未纯化的黑水虻幼虫样品中的几丁质含量和乙酰化度。与传统方法相比，该方法更适合评估高乙酰化度。首次报道了黑水虻几丁质的乙酰化度（81±2%）。此外，黑水虻软组织中的几丁质含量估计约占总几丁质含量的 20%（8.5±0.1%）。
