Chitin: Hydrolysis, sulfation and molecular weight analysis

Abstract

The aims of the study were to develop a reliable method to produce lower molecularweight chitin as a starting material to prepare sulfated low molecular weight chitinswhich could be used as an indirect method to characterize the molecular weight of thecorresponding hydrolyzed chitin. Blood assays were performed to evaluate therelationship between the anticoagulant properties of sulfated-chitins and theirmolecular weight and the relative effects of the sulfation.Chitin was hydrolyzed to lower molecular weight. As the molecular weightcharacterization was mainly dependent on the GPC 5%LiCl/DMAc system, whichwas not always reliably accurate, therefore, it was important to explore anothermethod to confirm the molecular weight. One possible way is to characterize themolecular weight in a different solvent system. The sulfated-chitins produced in thiswork are water soluble and make the characterization much easier in an aqueous GPCsystem.After sulfation, the anticoagulant properties of sulfated-chitins were assayed by APTT,TT and PT. The anticoagulation properties were explored as a function of themolecular weight and sulfation position of sulfated-chitin.