Scholarly record

COMPARATIVE UV-VIS SPECTRAL STUDIES ON CHITOSAN FROM DIFFERENT MARINE ORGANISMS

Carla‐Cezarina Pădurețu

Abstract

Chitosan is a natural polymer very widespread in the animal world, particularly in marine organisms. This biopolymer has three reactive groups in each glycoside unit of the polymeric chain: an amino group and two hydroxyl groups, which determine its characteristics. Between these groups, the most important is the amino group, which is responsible for the cationic nature of biopolymer and which gives its biological properties, as well as certain physical - chemical characteristics, such as solubility (at pH = 6 ? 6.5) or adsorption and ability to form films etc. Identification of a new marine sources and finding its applications in different areas represent major challenges for researchers. In this study comparative UV-VIS spectral studies of different chitosan samples extracted from various Romanian Black Sea Coast marine sources were performed. The marine sources were represented by Rapana venosa (Valenciennes, 1846) eggs capsules and shells, Palaemon elegans (Rathke, 1837) shrimp exoscheleton and Pachygrapsus marmoratus (Fabricius, 1787) crab exoscheleton. The purpose of this paper is to characterize from spectral point of view our samples of chitosan and to compare the results with those obtained for a commercial chitosan and for few pharmaceutical forms existing on the Romanian market. Our preliminary observations showed the similarity of our chitosan samples, obtained by chemical extraction with those of pharmaceutical standardized forms. Thus, these results could revealed few advantages regarding future applicability in pharmaceutical fields, both in powder and in solutions forms, of the extracted chitosan.

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