Bat guano as new and attractive chitin and chitosan source
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RESEARCH
Open Access
Bat guano as new and attractive chitin and chitosan source Murat Kaya1,2*, Osman Seyyar3, Talat Baran2,4 and Tuncay Turkes3
Abstract Introduction: Chitin is a biopolymer that forms the exoskeleton of arthropods, and is found in the cell walls of fungi. It has a wide range of uses in fields such as cosmetics, pharmacy, medicine, bioengineering, agriculture, textiles and environmental engineering based upon its nontoxic, ecofriendly, biocompability and biodegradability characteristics. Commercially, chitin is obtained from processing the outer skeleton of Crustacea such as shrimp, crab, prawn and crayfish after they have been consumed as food. The study aims to examine the nature of bat guano and to determine if it is a practical source of chitin, which has not been done previously. Results: In this study, the chitin content of dry bat guano samples was found to be 28%. The bat guano, which was collected from Karacamal Cave, came from the bat species Rhinolophus hipposideros. The chitosan yield of this chitin was 79%. The chitin produced from the bat guano was determined to be in the alpha form according to Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results. The crystallinity of the chitin and chitosan samples was calculated as 85.49 and 58.51% respectively by X-ray crystallography (XRD) experiments. According to scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrographs, the chitin and chitosan structures were shaped like nanofibers. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results showed that both chitin and chitosan had two step weight losses, which are characteristic of these materials. The nitrogen content of the chitin and chitosan was 6.47 and 7.3% respectively according to the elemental analysis results. Conclusions: In this research, it has been observed that bat guano can be considered to be an alternative source of chitin and chitosan to crab, shrimp, crayfish and krill. Keywords: Bat guano, Chitin, Chitosan, Characterization, Nanofibre
Introduction Chitin is a structural aminopolysaccharide that and is found in the cell walls of yeast, fungi, protists and diatoms as well forms the exoskeletons of broad variety of invertebrates including sponges, worms, mollusks and, especially, arthropods species. It has a wide range of uses in fields such as cosmetics, pharmacy, medicine, bioengineering, biological materials science, agriculture, textiles and environmental engineering based upon its nontoxic, ecofriendly, biocompability and biodegradability characteristics [1-5]. Commercially, chitin is obtained from processing the outer skeleton of Crustacea such as shrimp, crab, prawn and crayfish after they have * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Biotechnology and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Science and Letters Aksaray University, Aksaray 68100, Turkey 2 Science and Technology Application and Research Center, Aksaray University, Aksaray 68100, Turkey Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
been consumed as food [6,7]. Recently, there has been a need
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