• Journal of Life Science
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.1617-1624
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• 2008

Chitin and chitosan, which is deacetylated form of chitin, are one of the most abundant biomass on the earth. They showed various biological activities including antimicrobial activity, heavy metal chelating, immune system activation, and have very diverse applications in food, pharmaceutical, medicinal, and environmental industry. There have been reported many chitin/chitosan-hydrolyzing enzymes, their structures and genes from three domains, archaea, bacteria, and eukarya. Carbohydrate hydrolyzing enzymes are classified in CAZy (Carbohydrate Active Enzymes) database according to their amino acid sequence similarity. Interestingly, chitinases and chitosanases are classified in various glycosyl hydrolase(GH) families, GH2, GH5, GH7, GH8, GH18, GH19, GH20, GH46, GH48, GH73, GH75, GH80, GH84, and GH85. Here, we review characteristics and structures of chitin/chitosan hydrolyzing enzymes according to glycosyl hydrolase families in order to provide information about gene mining.