Paper accepted: Chitosan production methods influence receptor-mediated immune responses but not target-mediated antimicrobial bioactivities

Today, Dr. Margareta Hellmann’s and Katharina Eickelpasch’s paper, which is a direct follow-up of our discovery of a more regular than random pattern of acetylation in commercial chitosans due to the heterologous deacetylation process used for their production, has been accepted for publication in the renowned journal Carbohydrate Polymers. Together with Dr. Carolin Richter, who also serves as senior and corresponding author for the paper, they had selected pairs of chitosans with similar degrees of polymerization and fractions of acetylation, but different patterns of acetylation, random or regular. They compared their bioactivities and found that the pattern influences their plant strengthening activities, but not their antimicrobial activities. This observation led to the hypothesis that the pattern influences receptor-mediated responses – such as induction of the immune response in plants – but not target-mediated responses – such as the electrostatic interaction with microbial membranes. To corroborate this hypothesis, they teamed up with Dr. Pedro Barreto in the group of Prof. Markus Schwarzländer at our institute and with Alexandra Großdorf, doctoral candidate in PD. Dr. Christian Gorzelanny’s group at the University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg, who assayed additional receptor-mediated bioactivities in plants and human cells – and both turned out to also be pattern-dependent. It may sound like a simple story and it was quickly accepted for publication, but we consider it the next crucial step in understanding and exploiting chitosan bioactivities.