News |
Crab shells used to produce cheaper pharmaceuticals |
|
Crabs and lobsters ... they're not just for eating, anymore. Chitin, one of the main components of their exoskeletons, has recently found use in things such as self-healing car paint, biologically-compatible transistors, flu virus filters, and a possible replacement for plastic. Now, something else can be added to that list. Researchers from the Vienna University of Technology are developing a technique in which chitin is being used to cheaply produce a currently very-expensive source of antiviral drugs.
Many presently-used antiviral drugs are derived from N-Acetylneuraminic acid, also known as NANA. The substance can synthesized or obtained from natural sources, but in either case it is very costly - at about 2,000 euro (US$2,626) a gram, it is approximately 50 times more valuable than gold. The bioengineered Trichoderma can be cultivated in bioreactors, and finding enough food for it shouldn't be a problem ... chitin is the second-most common biopolymer on earth, occurring not only in crab and lobster shells, but also in insect exoskeletons, snail shells, cephalopods (such as squid), and some fungi. Read the complete story from Gizmag
|
|||
|
|
||
NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: Our big oceans need big ideas
May 16, 2013 -- SMAST associate professor for fisheries oceanography Steve Cadrin warns that, as easy as it is to blame everything on shifting populations or overfishing, the complexity of the ocean is nearly chaotic, and drawing useful conclusions requires making simplifying assumptions. One of those assumptions has always been that the environment was "fairly constant."
