Encyclopedia > Chitin

  Article Content

Chitin

Chitin is one of the main components in the in the cell walls of fungi, the exoskeleton of insects and other arthropods, and in some other animals. It is a polysaccharide, made out of units of acetylglucosamine (more completely, N-acetyl-D-glucos-2-amine). These are linked together in β-1,4 fashion, the same as the glucose units that make up cellulose. So chitin may be thought of as cellulose, with one hydroxyl group on each monomer replaced by an acetylamino group. This allows for increased hydrogen bonding between adjacent polymers, giving the material increased strength.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Rameses

... several Egyptian pharaohs: Ramses I[?] Ramses II ("The Great") Ramses III Ramses IV[?] The name means "Child of the Sun". This is a disambiguation page; that ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 27.5 ms