0973-7510 Journal of Pure and Applied Microbiology 2581-690X DR. M.N. Khan 10.22207/JPAM.15.2.55 Extraction of Chitosan from Crab Shell and Fungi and Its Antibacterial Activity against Urinary Tract Infection Causing Pathogens Abirami S R Emilin Renitta Samrot Antony V Sakthikavitha M Revathi P Varsini A. Mini S Dhiva Saigeetha S Shobana N Prakash P Department of Microbiology, Kamaraj College, Thoothukudi – 628 003, Tamil Nadu, India. Department of Food Processing Technology, School of Agriculture and Biosciences, Karunya Institute of Science and Technology, Karunya Nagar, Coimbatore – 641 114, India. School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing, and Bioscience, MAHSA University, Jalan SP 2, Bandar Saujana Putra, 42610 Jenjarom Selangor, Malaysia. Department of Microbiology, Sree Narayana College, Alathur, Palakkad, Kerala – 678 682, Kerala, India. Department of Biotechnology, School of Bio and Chemical Engineering, Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai – 600 119, Tamil Nadu, India. 01 06 2021 15 2 968 975 Copyright © 2021 The Author(s) 2021 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In this study, shells of sea crab and fungus Aspergillus niger were subjected for chitosan extraction which has been done following demineralization, deproteination and deacetylation. Chitosan yield from crab shell and fungi was 37.5% and 39.3% respectively and water binding capacity was 58.44% and 60.21% respectively. The extracted chitosan was characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and subjected for antibacterial activity against Urinary tract infection (UTI) pathogens – Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus mirabilis and E. coli. Chitosan of crab shell showed better antibacterial activity than fungal derived chitosan. Chitosan gel was prepared using the extracted chitosan where it was also showing good antibacterial activity.

 Keywords Crab shell fungal cell chitosan antibacterial activity UTI pathogens