Chitin is one the most abundant polymers in nature and interacts with both carbon and nitrogen cycles. Processes controlling chitin degradation are summarized in reviews published some 20 years ago, but the recent use of culture-independent molecular methods has led to a revised understanding of the ecology and biochemistry of this process and the organisms involved. This review summarizes diff...

background: linum album, a herbaceous and medicinal plant, has been shown to accumulate anti-tumor podophyllotoxin (ptox) and related lignans. objective: in this study, we have verified the time-course of cell growth, lignan production in cells treated with chitosan and chitin oligomers. to study mechanism of chitosan and chitin oligomers action, expression of phenylalanine ammonio-lyase (pal),...

Relatively little is known about the number, diversity, and function of chitinases produced by bacteria, even though chitin is one of the most abundant polymers in nature. Because of the importance of chitin, especially in marine environments, we examined chitin-degrading proteins in the marine bacterium Vibrio harveyi. This bacterium had a higher growth rate and more chitinase activity when gr...

Chitin, an N-acetyl-D-glucosamine polymer, is a component of fungal cell walls and a microbe/pathogen-associated molecular pattern that elicits plant defense responses. As polymeric chitin is difficult to handle due to its insolubility in water, many studies on chitin-induced immune responses have used water-soluble low-molecular weight chitin instead. Thus, it is unclear if polymeric chitin ca...

Chitin is a polymer of N-acetylglucosamine that is abundant and widely found in the biological world. It is an important constituent of the cuticular exoskeleton that plays a key role in the insect life cycle. To date, the study of chitin deposition during cuticle formation has been limited by the lack of a method to detect it in living organisms. To overcome this limitation, we have developed ...

Chitin is a natural polysaccharide of major importance. This biopolymer is synthesized by an enormous number of living organisms; considering the amount of chitin produced annually in the world, it is the most abundant polymer after cellulose. The most important derivative of chitin is chitosan, obtained by partial deacetylation of chitin under alkaline conditions or by enzymatic hydrolysis. Ch...

C is the second most important natural polymer in the nature after cellulose. The main sources of the chitin compounds are shrimp and crabs.Our objective is to discuss the state of the art on extraction of nano chitin whiskers and Chitin based nanocomposites using different type of polymer matrixes. This review manly focuses on the preparation, characterization, properties, morphologies and che...

Even though chitin is one of the most abundant biopolymers in nature, current knowledge on chitin formation is largely based only on data from fungi and insects. This study reveals unanticipated broad taxonomic distribution and extensive diversification of chitin synthases (CSs) in Metazoa, shedding new light on the relevance of chitin in animals and suggesting unforeseen complexity of chitin s...

Plants detect potential pathogens by sensing microbe associated molecular patterns via pattern recognition receptors. In the dicot model plant Arabidopsis, the Lysin Motif (LysM) containing Chitin Elicitor Receptor Kinase 1 (CERK1) has been shown to be essential for perception of the fungal cell wall component chitin and for resistance to fungal pathogens. Recent in vitro studies with CERK1 pro...