Structural polysaccharide newly prepared from the toxic crab inhabiting subtropical areas

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Chitin is one of the most abundant biopolymers on the Earth. In this research, chitin was purified from the exoskeleton of coconut crabs Birgus latro in Ishigaki Island, Okinawa prefecture, Japan and their characters were examined by some instrumental analysis. In scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis, the surface image of this chitin shows network structure. In infrared (IR) spectrophotometry analysis, the C=O stretching (amide I) band at 1622-1667 cm-1 appeared. CP/MAS 13C-NMR can easily distinguish between two types of chitin because of differing spectral appearances in the region of ring carbons (110-50 ppm); one shows six well-defined resonances.Six resonance lines at 104.300(C1), 83.459(C4), 76.026(C5), 73.694(C3), 61.306(C6) and 55.476(C2) ppm are clearly shown. Gel strength of chitosan-formaldehyde gel from coconut crabs is 6 times stronger than that of chitosan-formaldehyde gel prepared from chitosan standard.