Chitoligossacharides production: study of specific and non-specific enzyme immobilization
chitosan. adsorption. oligomers.
Oligosaccharides from different biopolymers have been produced in order to add value to a residue such as chitosan, which it is present in the exoskeleton of crustaceans. The chitoligosaccharides are studied due to their various biological activities, such as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial, and antidiabetic. One of the great difficulties of studies involving chitoligosaccharides is their production, because it is burdensome. For this reason, it is important the development of processes that allow to decrease the production cost, even using enzymes with high degree of purity, being suitable for a future application of pharmaceutical purposes. The more intuitive alternative is the enzyme immobilization, since they become more stable and can be used in more than one batch or a continuous process. In addition to the chitoligosaccharides, it is important to evaluate the behavior of non-specific enzymes immobilized to the production of COS, because they are also effective to hydrolyse chitosan. Therefore, the development of a process that is able to produce in a controlled manner the types of bioactive is economically more interesting for the COS production. Thus, this work aims to carry out the immobilization of quitosanase, cellulase and lysozyme by adsorption and promote the production of chitoligosaccharides using a fixed bed column.