Production, physiochemical and antimicrobial properties of fungal chitosan from Rhizomucor miehei and Mucor racemosus

Chitosan was isolated and purified from the mycelia of Rhizomucor miehei and Mucor racemosus. To characterize the extracted materials, their FTIR spectra were compared with that of shrimp chitosan. Final degree of deacetylation which determined by H-1 NMR was obtained as 98.6% for chitosan from R. miehei (named as Cl) and 97.1% for chitosan from M. racemosus (named as C2), respectively. To investigate the antimicrobial properties of the isolated fungal chitosans, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values were performed against twelve strains of bacteria and fungi. Data obtained generally showed that the antibacterial and antifungal activities of the purified fungal chitosans were more effective against Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeroginosa, Candida albicans and Candida glabrata in comparison to the shrimp chitosan. Taken together, the results suggest that the use of the fungal chitosan could be of interest as a suitable alternative source to shrimp chitosan. (C) 2010 Elsevier BM. All rights reserved.