Chitosan is one of the most promising polymers for biomedical applications due to its unique properties, such as its biocompatibility, low toxicity, biodegradation, and the presence of reactive amino and hydroxyl groups. Analysis of physicochemical properties of chitosan and its derivatives is a time-consuming process and requires expensive equipment and large amounts of the sample. This paper proposes a method for express analysis of the molecular weight (MW), the degree of deacetylation (DD), the substitution degree (SD), and the charge of chitosan and its derivatives using agarose gel electrophoresis under acidic and neutral conditions with Coomassie staining. Positively charged chitosan samples required acidic Tris Acetate-EDTA (TAE) buffer to move in the gel. The electrophoretic mobility of chitosan depended on MW, DD, SD, and the chitosan charge. Based on the dependences obtained by the proposed method, the MW and DD of commercial chitosan samples were determined. Express analysis of chitosan and its derivatives in agarose gel can be used to monitor the reactions of chitosan modification and to analyse samples with unknown characteristics.
Chitosan derivatives were obtained by chemical (MW of 6 kDa, DD 99% - Ch6/99; MW13 kDa, DD 98% - Ch13/98) and enzymatic (MW of 5 kDa, DD 85% - Ch5/85; MW of 10 kDa, DD 85% - Ch10/85) depolymeri-sation of chitosan with a MW of 334 and 1000 kDa. Chitosan derivatives (almost identical MW pairs and different DD) possessed insignificant an-ticoagulant activity, did not promote human platelet aggregation and re-duced ADP or collagen-induced platelet aggregation. The studied sam-ples at a concentration of 2 mg/ml reduced the aggregation of platelets more than twice induced in 2x10-6M and 1x10-5M concentrations; at weak activation in 2x10-6M, the Ch10/85 sample was the most effective. The Ch6/99 and Ch13/98 samples were 20 times more effective at the inhibi-tion of collagen-induced platelet aggregation than the Ch10/85 sample. The latter can be explained by the greater value of positive charge (DD) and polydispersity (Mw/Mn) of chitosan samples obtained by chemical de-polymerisation
Membranes were prepared using three chitosans with different molecular weights and degrees of deacetylation. The influence of chitosan features on membrane physicochemical properties, i.e. degree of swelling, contact angle and tensile strength, as well as membrane separation properties in ethanol dehydration by the vapour permeation process are discussed. The conducted experiments showed that an increase in the chitosan molecular weight led to an increase in the membrane surface contact angle concomitant with a decrease in the material selectivity coefficient. On the other hand, an increase in the chitosan degree of deacetylation caused a reduction in ethanol and improved the water permeate flux. There was greater selectivity in the test process for membranes prepared from chitosan with the lowest molecular weight.
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