Antioxidant Properties of Chitooligosaccharides Produced by Enzymatic Degradation of Chitosan

Abstract

Chitooligosaccharides (COS) are the degraded products of chitosan produced by the depolymerization process, which is receiving greater attention due to their array of beneficial health properties. Compared to chitin and chitosan, COS has low molecular weight, low viscosity, high solubility, biodegradability and biocompatibility. Physical, chemical, and enzymatic methods are available to produce COS, and all these methods have their own merits and demerits. Enzymatic methods using specific chitinolytic enzymes give controlled hydrolyzed products, but the high costs of chitinolytic enzymes and lower yields hamper their practical application and feasibility compared to other methods (Liang et al., 2018). Considering the demerits, researchers have reported the alternative low-cost, high-productivity, and feasible commercial production process using non-specific enzymes available in plenty at low cost (Pantaleone et al., 1992). Proteolytic enzymes are most commonly used for the depolymerization of chitosan. In this study, the non-specific enzyme, papain was used to depolymerize the chitosan and the antioxidant properties of Chitooligosaccharides were determined.