Department of Sciences, University of Basilicata - Via dell'Ateneo Lucano 10, 85100 Potenza, Italy.
Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, University of Pisa - Largo Lucio Lazzarino, 56122 Pisa, Italy.
Int J Biol Macromol. 2024 Jun;271(Pt 2):132669. doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2024.132669. Epub 2024 May 25.
The increasing demand for chitin and chitosan is driving research to explore alternative sources to crustaceans. Insects, particularly bioconverters as Hermetia illucens, are promising substitutes as they process food industry waste into valuable molecules, including chitin. Chitosan can be produced by chitin deacetylation: hot deacetylation to obtain a heterogeneous chitosan, the commonly produced, and cold deacetylation to obtain a homogeneous chitosan, not widely available. The two different treatments lead to a different arrangement of the amine and acetyl groups in the chitosan structure, affecting its molecular weight, deacetylation degree, and biological activity. This is the first report on the production and chemical-physical and biological characterization of homogenous chitosan derived from H. illucens larvae, pupal exuviae, and adults. This work, in addition to the report on heterogeneous chitosan by our research group, completes the overview of H. illucens chitosan. The yield values obtained for homogeneous chitosan from pupal exuviae (3 and 7 %) are in the range of insect (2-8 %) and crustaceans (4-15 %) chitosan. The evaluation of the antioxidant activity and antimicrobial properties against Gram-negative (Escherichia coli) and Gram-positive (Micrococcus flavus) bacteria confirmed the great versatility of H. illucens chitosan for biomedical and industrial applications and its suitability as an alternative source to crustaceans.
甲壳素和壳聚糖的需求不断增加,促使研究探索甲壳类动物以外的替代资源。昆虫,特别是蝇蛆(Hermetia illucens)等生物转化者,是很有前途的替代品,因为它们可以将食品工业废物转化为有价值的分子,包括甲壳素。壳聚糖可以通过甲壳素脱乙酰化来生产:热脱乙酰化得到不均一的壳聚糖,是常见的产物;冷脱乙酰化得到均一的壳聚糖,不太常见。这两种不同的处理方法导致壳聚糖结构中胺基和乙酰基的排列方式不同,从而影响其分子量、脱乙酰度和生物活性。这是第一篇关于从蝇蛆幼虫、蛹壳和成虫中生产和化学物理及生物学特性的均一壳聚糖的报告。除了我们研究小组报告的不均一壳聚糖外,这项工作完成了对蝇蛆壳聚糖的全面概述。从蛹壳中获得的均一壳聚糖的产率(3%和 7%)在昆虫(2-8%)和甲壳类动物(4-15%)壳聚糖的范围内。对抗革兰氏阴性(大肠杆菌)和革兰氏阳性(黄色微球菌)细菌的抗氧化活性和抗菌性能的评估证实,蝇蛆壳聚糖具有广泛的生物医学和工业应用多功能性,适合作为甲壳类动物的替代资源。
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