Abstract
Insect-derived chitin and chitosan have gained interest as alternative sources to that derived from crustaceans; however, little information is available on chitin from the house cricket (Acheta domesticus) and tropical banded cricket (Gryllodes sigillatus), two cricket species commonly reared in the United States for human consumption. In this study, chitin was successfully isolated and purified from these two cricket species; using FTIR, chitins were found to be in alpha-crystalline form. Cricket chitosan was produced from both species with varying degrees of deacetylation (DDA) by varying alkaline conversion duration. G. sigillatus chitosan was larger (524 kDa) than A. domesticus chitosan (344 kDa). Both cricket chitosans showed similar (p > 0.05) lipid-binding capacity to that of shrimp chitosan. Both chitosans were as effective at inhibiting microbial growth of surrogate foodborne pathogens as the commercial shrimp chitosan. At a concentration of 0.50 mg/mL cricket chitosan, approximately 100% of Listeria innocua growth was inhibited, due to a contribution of both chitosan and the solvent-acetic acid. At the same concentration, growth of Escherichia coli was inhibited 90% by both cricket chitosan samples with ~80% DDA, where a decrease in the DDA led to decreased antimicrobial activity. However, varying the DDA had no effect on chitosan’s lipid-binding capacity. As more edible insects become a normalized protein source in our diet, the use of by-products, such as chitin and chitosan, derived from insect protein processing, show promising applications for the pharmaceutical and food industries.
Highlights
Chitin is a polysaccharide consisting of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine units that form a polymer through covalent β-1,4-linkages; it is commonly converted to its counterpart chitosan through replacement of its acetyl group with an amino group [1]
Chitin from two edible cricket species commonly reared in the United States were successfully collected as a by-product of cricket protein hydrolysis and adequately isolated through demineralization and deproteinization processing steps
Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) results confirmed that cricket chitin was in its alpha-crystalline form, similar to that isolated from most crustacean and insect species
Summary
Chitin is a polysaccharide consisting of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine units that form a polymer through covalent β-1,4-linkages; it is commonly converted to its counterpart chitosan through replacement of its acetyl group with an amino group [1]. Crustacean (crab and shrimp) shells, a by-product of the food industry, are mainly used as commercial sources of chitin and chitosan [2,3,4,5] Another subphylum of Arthropoda is the Hexapoda, which contains the class Insecta with over 1 million species. Research is available on chitin obtained from bumblebees, grasshoppers, crickets, hornets, wasps, centipedes, velvet worms and other species of cockroaches and beetles, among others [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14] In this context, edible insects have gained recent attention as emerging protein sources to help alleviate the demand of food in a growing world population [15].
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