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Author: Ehrlich, Hermann × DDC: 540 × Subject: Chitin × Subject: Demosponges × WGL Institute: IPF ×

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    First Report on Chitin in a Non-Verongiid Marine Demosponge: The Mycale euplectellioides Case
    (Basel : MDPI, 2018) Żółtowska-Aksamitowska, Sonia; Shaala, Lamiaa A.; Youssef, Diaa T.A.; Elhady, Sameh S.; Tsurkan, Mikhail V.; Petrenko, Iaroslav; Wysokowski, Marcin; Tabachnick, Konstantin; Meissner, Heike; Ivanenko, Viatcheslav N.; Bechmann, Nicole; Joseph, Yvonne; Jesionowski, Teofil; Ehrlich, Hermann
    Sponges (Porifera) are recognized as aquatic multicellular organisms which developed an effective biochemical pathway over millions of years of evolution to produce both biologically active secondary metabolites and biopolymer-based skeletal structures. Among marine demosponges, only representatives of the Verongiida order are known to synthetize biologically active substances as well as skeletons made of structural polysaccharide chitin. The unique three-dimensional (3D) architecture of such chitinous skeletons opens the widow for their recent applications as adsorbents, as well as scaffolds for tissue engineering and biomimetics. This study has the ambitious goal of monitoring other orders beyond Verongiida demosponges and finding alternative sources of naturally prestructured chitinous scaffolds; especially in those demosponge species which can be cultivated at large scales using marine farming conditions. Special attention has been paid to the demosponge Mycale euplectellioides (Heteroscleromorpha: Poecilosclerida: Mycalidae) collected in the Red Sea. For the first time, we present here a detailed study of the isolation of chitin from the skeleton of this sponge, as well as its identification using diverse bioanalytical tools. Calcofluor white staining, Fourier-transform Infrared Spcetcroscopy (FTIR), electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and fluorescence microscopy, as well as a chitinase digestion assay were applied in order to confirm with strong evidence the finding of a-chitin in the skeleton of M. euplectellioides. We suggest that the discovery of chitin within representatives of the Mycale genus is a promising step in their evaluation of these globally distributed sponges as new renewable sources for both biologically active metabolites and chitin, which are of prospective use for pharmacology and biomaterials oriented biomedicine, respectively.
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    New Source of 3D Chitin Scaffolds: The Red Sea Demosponge Pseudoceratina arabica (Pseudoceratinidae, Verongiida)
    (Basel : MDPI, 2019) Shaala, Lamiaa A.; Asfour, Hani Z.; Youssef, Diaa T.A.; Żółtowska-Aksamitowska, Sonia; Wysokowski, Marcin; Tsurkan, Mikhail; Galli, Roberta; Meissner, Heike; Petrenko, Iaroslav; Tabachnick, Konstantin; Ivanenko, Viatcheslav N.; Bechmann, Nicole; Muzychka, Lyubov V.; Smolii, Oleg B.; Martinović, Rajko; Joseph, Yvonne; Jesionowski, Teofil; Ehrlich, Hermann
    The bioactive bromotyrosine-derived alkaloids and unique morphologically-defined fibrous skeleton of chitin origin have been found recently in marine demosponges of the order Verongiida. The sophisticated three-dimensional (3D) structure of skeletal chitinous scaffolds supported their use in biomedicine, tissue engineering as well as in diverse modern technologies. The goal of this study was the screening of new species of the order Verongiida to find another renewable source of naturally prefabricated 3D chitinous scaffolds. Special attention was paid to demosponge species, which could be farmed on large scale using marine aquaculture methods. In this study, the demosponge Pseudoceratina arabica collected in the coastal waters of the Egyptian Red Sea was examined as a potential source of chitin for the first time. Various bioanalytical tools including scanning electron microscopy (SEM), fluorescence microscopy, FTIR analysis, Calcofluor white staining, electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), as well as a chitinase digestion assay were successfully used to confirm the discovery of a-chitin within the skeleton of P. arabica. The current finding should make an important contribution to the field of application of this verongiid sponge as a novel renewable source of biologically-active metabolites and chitin, which are important for development of the blue biotechnology especially in marine oriented biomedicine. © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).