Paper accepted: “Enzymatic Production and Enzymatic-Mass Spectrometric Fingerprinting Analysis of Chitosan Polymers with Different Non-Random Patterns of Acetylation”

Our first paper this year - an excellent start! Today, one of the joint papers of Dr. Jasper Wattjes and Dr. Anna Niehues has been accepted for publication in the highly reputed Journal of the American Chemical Society - JACS. This is the first systematic study on the patterns of acetylation of chitosan polymers after partial enzymatic de-N-acetylation. Jasper used different recombinant fungal chitin deacetylases to convert a highly acetylated chitosan polymer into one with low degree of acetylation. Using 13C-NMR diad analysis, he found that depending on the enzyme used, the resulting chitosans had different, non-random patterns of acetylation. He and Anna then developed an enzymatic/mass spectrometric fingerprinting analysis using our recently described, highly pattern-specific chitosan degrading enzyme chitinosanase and our quantitative mass spectrometric sequencing technique for chitosan oligomers. The resulting data were analyzed by Anna using complex multivariate statistics and in silico modeling, giving more detailed insight into the pattern of acetylation of the chitosan polymers. To find out whether the pattern of acetylation influences the properties of chitosan polymers - an analysis that had never been possible before because all conventional chitosans prepared using alkaline deacetylation are characterized by a random pattern of acetylation - Jasper traveled to Lyon to investigate the solution properties of the novel enzymatically deacetylated chitosans in the lab of Prof. Laurent David and Prof. Thierry Delair. And they are different. So yes indeed: patterns matter!