Improving the Performance of Chitin Bioprocessing: Pretreating Chitin and Optimizing Active Enzyme

Abstract

Chitin, with its dense crystal structure, presents a formidable challenge in bioprocessing due to its insolubility in various solvents. To address this issue, researchers have devised two primary strategies to overcome this hurdle. The first involves pretreated chitin to loosen its structure and reduce its crystallinity, such as ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents, KOH/urea, ultrasound, steam explosion, etc. This allows enzymes to have more contact sites with chitin, thereby improving the efficiency of the enzyme reaction. The second aspect is the use of biotechnology to modify chitin-active enzymes, containing optimization of the fermentation conditions, directed evolution strategies, enzyme immobilization, etc., to increase their activity on chitin crystals. This article provides references for improving the activity of chitin deacetylases or chitinases and the biotransformation of chitin into chitosan and chitin oligosaccharides through comments on the above two aspects.