~ 353 ~ International Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Studies 2019; 7(4): 353-355 E-ISSN: 2347-5129 P-ISSN: 2394-0506 (ICV-Poland) Impact Value: 5.62 (GIF) Impact Factor: 0.549 IJFAS 2019; 7(4): 353-355 © 2019 IJFAS www.fisheriesjournal.com Received: 21-05-2019 Accepted: 25-06-2019 Nageswararao PV Department of Zoology, Division of Aquaculture and Fisheries, Andhra University, A.U. P.O., Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India Babu DE Department of Zoology, Division of Aquaculture and Fisheries, Andhra University, A.U. P.O., Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India Correspondence Nageswararao PV Department of Zoology, Division of Aquaculture and Fisheries, Andhra University, A.U. P.O., Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India Assessment of anti-microbial activity of chitin, chitosan and shrimp shell of Litopenaeus vannamei from bhimavaram farms, west Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh Nageswararao PV and Babu DE Abstract Chitin and chitosan are valuable marine biopolymers, which is an abundant by-product of the shrimp processing industry. Chitosan is an amino polysaccharide prepared by processing shrimp waste (Shell) which involves partial deacetylation of chitin. The chitin and chitosan were isolated from shrimp exoskeleton. The Extracted chitosan have antimicrobial properties were determined by employing several microbial organisms like Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. The current study demonstrates the extracted chitosan exhibit potent anti-microbial activity. Keywords: shrimp shell, chitin, chitosan, anti-microbial activity Introduction Chitin is composed of repeating monomer units of 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-β-Dglucose connected through β (1→4) linkage, resembling cellulose, except that the hydroxyl groups in position 2 have been substituted by acetamido groups [Fernandez-Kim, 2004; Kumar, 2000] [5, 11] . Chitin, poly (β-(1→4)-N-acetyl-D-glucosamine), first identified in 1884, is a naturally occurring polysaccharide consisting of amino sugars. This biopolymer is synthesized by an extremely large number of living organisms and considering the amount of chitin produced annually in the world, it is the second most plentiful natural polymer, behind only cellulose [Fernandez-Kim, 2004; Kumar, 2000; Rinaudo, 2006] [5, 11, 17] . Chitosan, a cationic polysaccharide with a high molecular weight, linear polymer that comprises -1, 4- linked glucosamine (GLCN) 1 with various amounts of N-acetylated GLCN residues. It is typically obtained by the alkaline deactivation of chitin extracted from an abundant source of shellfish exoskeletons or the cell walls of some microorganisms (Hirano et al., 1976) [6] . It has attracted marked interest as a biomedical material, because it has unique biological activities, such as antitumor (Saiki et al., 1990) [18] , immune stimulatory (Meyer and Isaksen, 1995) [15] and antibacterial (Tokoro et al., 1989; Kobayashi et al., 1990) [22, 10] , activities. Both Chitin and chitosan are considered as low cost adsorbent for the removal of toxic heavy metals. Chitin and chitosan are reported wide range of applications in the various fields due to their good biocompatibility, biodegradability, metal-binding capacity, wound healing capacity and capacity to form membranes, beads, fibers, scaffold and gels (Tripathi et al., 2009; Elwakeel, 2010) [23, 4] . The antimicrobial property has been established beside diverse genus of microbes, which required extensive care especially with some strains of pathogenic microscopic organism (Li et al., 1992; Khanafari et al., 2008; Limam et al., 2011) [9, 13] . The effects against microbial property of chitosan substance are significantly based on its material appearances, greatest particular molecular mass, and deacetylation status (DD). Chitosan that contains greater deacetylation degree has a larger ability as inhibitory property against bacterial strains (Acharya et al., 2005) [1] . Few years ago, many studies reported concerning chitosan that it could be used as bio product compound (Li et al., 1992; Limam et al., 2011) [12, 9] . Nevertheless, chitosan has great molecular weight, which affects reduced solubility and also becomes high viscosity solution, restricts its utilization as supplementary nutrition, foundation, farming and medicine manufacturing (Xie et al., 2001) [27] . The shrimp waste has been used