Isolation and Characterization of Chitosan-Producing Bacteria from Beaches of Chennai, India

Chitosan is a deacetylated product of chitin produced by chitin deacetylase, an enzyme that hydrolyses acetamido groups of N-acetylglucosamine in chitin. Chitosan is a natural polymer that has great potential in biotechnology and in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries. Commercially, it is produced from chitin via a harsh thermochemical process that shares most of the disadvantages of a multistep chemical procedure. It is environmentally unsafe and not easily controlled, leading to a broad and heterogeneous range of products. An alternative or complementary procedure exploiting the enzymatic deacetylation of chitin could potentially be employed, especially when a controlled and well-defined process is required. In this study, 20 strains of bacteria were isolated from soil samples collected from different beaches of Chennai, India. Of these 20 bacterial strains, only 2 strains (S3, S14) are potent degrader of chitin and they are also a good producer of the enzyme chitin deacetylase so as to release chitosan.