New source of chitosan from Black Sea marine organisms identification

ABSTRACTThe Romanian Black Sea environment, due to its biodiversity, contains a lot of organism, which represents a rich natural resource of many biologically active compounds, such as: sterols, proteins, polyunsaturated fatty acid, polysaccharides, pigments and antioxidants.In their evolution, marine organisms in the Black Sea adapted excellently to the marine environment such as: low temperature, absence of light, extreme pH and pressure, low salinity, low oxygen, the presence of one toxic abiotic chemical (H2S). Moreover, they produce a wide variety of secondary metabolites (biologically active), which cannot be found in other terrestrial organisms.Chitosan is a copolymer of β-(1→4)-linked 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose and 2-amino-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose. Usually, it is obtained by deacethylation of the natural chitin, which is extracted from the exoskeleton of marine organisms, mainly crabs and shrimps. Chitosan could have a lot of applications in biomaterials, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, metal ...