The complex world of polysaccharides edited by Desiree Nedra Karunaratne

XII

  Preface

 

 

chemistry, physics and biology of this ubiquitous biopolymer. There is still a wealth of 

knowledge to be explored in the study of polysaccharides. 

I wish to acknowledge with thanks, the assistance provided by the publishing team at 

InTech and their courteous service and prompt responses that made this a pleasant 

task. To the contributors who provided valuable insight into various aspects of 

polysaccharides, a big thank you. I wish them success in their future endeavours on 

polysaccharide research. Last but not least, the support and encouragement provided 

by my husband and family during this assignment which sustained me throughout 

the project is valued highly.  

 

Professor Desiree Nedra Karunaratne 

Department of Chemistry, 

University of Peradeniya,  

Peradeniya, 

Sri Lanka 

---

 

---

 

 

 

---

Section 1 

 

 

 

 

Sources and Biological Properties  

of Polysaccharides 

 

  

---

 

---

Chapter 1 

 

 

 

 

© 2012 Miranda Castro and Paulín, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the 

terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which 

permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is 

properly cited. 

Is Chitosan a New Panacea? Areas of Application 

Susana P. Miranda Castro and Eva G. Lizárraga Paulín 

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter 

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/51200 

1. Introduction 

Polysaccharides are extremely common in nature and cellulose is the most common organic 

compound on the planet. It is said that the second most common polysaccharide in the 

world after cellulose is chitin. “Chitin is to shellfish what cellulose is to trees”. 

It's been more than two centuries since chitin was discovered formally and considered very 

important from the scientific and industrial point of view, as it has many applications in 

many different areas. 

The development of commercial applications for chitin and chitosan has progressed. The 

first known use of chitosan was a durable, flexible film used as a component in the varnish 

applied to Stradivarius violins, however new efforts are changing its vision in the market. 

The emphasis on environmentally friendly technology has stimulated interest in 

biopolymers, which are more versatile and far more biodegradable than their synthetic 

counterpart. 

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the basic concepts of chemistry and the 

application of this polysaccharide that is gaining much interest due to the properties it 

presents and the many applications in various fields. Thousands of scientific articles have 

been reported in the last 20 years where companies appeared engaging and exploiting this 

material worldwide. Through investigation many questions have arisen but have not yet 

answered, however, this polysaccharide has been very successful in many applications. 

Furthermore, this chapter aims to convince young readers to further research on possible 

technology that tend to care for the environment and health. 

2. The origin and discovery of chitin  

The universe began about 15 million years ago. Materials with high temperature and density 

were expanded, released energy, then cooled and gave birth to stars, planets and all living 

beings. The sun was born 5 billion years and 0.4 million years later gave birth to Earth. 

---

 

The Complex World of Polysaccharides 

 

4 

Why talk about the birth of the earth? This is because the chitin could be a constituent of the 

first living cell. It actually came into existence long before the dinosaurs. In the late 

Precambrian period, two billion years ago, living cells appeared with nuclei containing 

chitin around it. In the Silurian period 440 million years, land plants appeared containing 

cellulose. Fish appeared in the Carboniferous period and later, the arthropods in the 

Devonian period. The first dinosaurs lived two hundred million years ago and during the 

second half of the Jurassic period the crab rich in chitin appeared. 

After dinosaurs occupied the Earth for 100 million years, from the Jurassic to Cretaceous, 

they were extinguished by a comet that crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years 

ago, but crabs and small animals escaped this catastrophy. 

Since living beings appeared, cellulose and chitin have been beneficial in general and both 

maintained an ecological balance. Chitin is the animal version of the cellulose and it is the 

second most abundant in nature, but Professor M Peter has challenged that assumption by 

saying that Chitin is certainly a very abundant material even if much of it is not readily 

accessible for industrial use and suggested that hemicelluloses, which occur in conjunction 

with cellulose in trees and other plants, are actually more abundant than chitin. The 

hemicellulose component averages about half of the cellulose component, whereas the 

normal estimate of chitin production is that it is one whole order of magnitude less than that 

of cellulose. Another possible contender is lignin, which again occurs in conjunction with 

cellulose in most plants and, like hemicelluloses, averages about half of the cellulose 

component. A fourth possible contender is starch which like cellulose it is a major 

component of vegetable matter where it acts as a reserve material rather than a structural 

component [1]. 

The English word “chitin” comes from the French word chitine, which first appeared in 

1836. These words were derived from the Greek word chitōn, meaning mollusk that is 

influenced by the Greek word khitōn, meaning “tunic” or “frock”. That word may come 

from the Central Semitic word *kittan, the Akkadian words kitû or kita’um, meaning flax or 

linen, and the Sumerian word gada or gida. A similar word, “chiton”, refers to a marine 

animal with a protective shell (also known as a “sea cradle” [2]. 

It is normally accepted as a fact that chitin was first isolated from mushrooms and called 

“fungine” by the French chemist Henri Bracconot in 1811. Charles Jeuniaux suggested in a 

paper presented at the 1st International Conference of the European Chitin Society held in 

Brest in 1995, that chitin had previously been isolated from arthropod cuticle by the English 

scientist A Hachett in 1795. However, as pointed out by Professor Jeuniaux, Hachett only 

reported the presence in the cuticle of an organic material particularly resistant to the usual 

chemical reagents but did not investigate it further. Braconnot on the other hand carried out 

chemical analysis on his fungical culture, and reported the formation of acetic acid from it 

on treatment with hot acid, and concluded it was a new material. Braconnot may be 

considered the discoverer of chitin even though his name for the new material, ‘fungine’, 

was soon replaced by its current name “chitin”which was first proposed by Odier [3,4]. 

---