Extraction and Characterization of Chitin and Chitosan from Tenebrio Molitor Beetles and Investigation of its Antibacterial Effect Against Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

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.