Cryomilling-assisted high purity β-chitin extraction from Uroteuthis edulis pens

Joong-Kwon Kim; Myeong-Oh Song; Jihye Kim; Seoi Kim; Jungho Jin

doi:10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2024.131815

Cryomilling-assisted high purity β-chitin extraction from Uroteuthis edulis pens

Int J Biol Macromol. 2024 Apr 24;268(Pt 1):131815. doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2024.131815. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Joong-Kwon Kim¹, Myeong-Oh Song¹, Jihye Kim¹, Seoi Kim¹, Jungho Jin²

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 44610, Republic of Korea.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 44610, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: jinuine@ulsan.ac.kr.

PMID: 38670192
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2024.131815

Abstract

We report on the extraction of β-chitin from pens (or Gladius) of Uroteuthis edulis, a squid species prevalent in the Pacific coastal regions of East Asia. In particular, we employ cryogenic mechanical grinding (or cryomilling) as a pre-treatment process for the raw squid pens. We show that the cryomilling step enables an effective pulverization of the raw materials, which facilitates the removal of protein residues allowing the extraction of high-purity β-chitin with a high acetylation degree (∼97 %) and crystallinity (∼82 %). We also demonstrate that the Uroteuthis edulis extract β-chitin affords a free-standing film with excellent optical transmittance and mechanical properties.

Keywords: Chitin nanofiber; Cryomilling; Squid pen; Uroteuthis edulis; β-Chitin.