Marine Biomaterials: Characterization, Isolation and Applications

Abstract

After the 2011 publication Chitin, Chitosan, Oligosaccharides and Their Derivatives, and the 2012 Marine Cosmeceutical, both edited by professor Se-Kwon Kim this third book, completes the series on the topic of chitins and other raw materials obtainable from the sea. As well known chitin is a natural polymer obtained from the fishery' waste material, easily metabolized from the human chitotriosidases and the environment chitinases and, therefore, considered safe and grass ingredient. It is interesting to underline how the major use of industrial by-products, as the plant biomass and the fishery' waste, is becoming a fundamental necessity to save the environmental pollution and slow down the greenhouse gas emissions. At this purpose this book represents another precious source of ideas useful for increasing the knowledge on chitins and the other interesting raw materials obtainable from the sea, contemporary stimulating their industrial use, necessary to safeguard both the equilibrium of the earth environment and the maintenance of its biodiversity. Our life depends from an intricate net of correlations and all together plants, animals and microorganisms regulate the entire biosphere, maintaining the condition for our living. According to Fritjof Capra "the survival of humanity will depend from our ecological knowledge, the capacity of understanding the fundamentals of ecology and to live accordingly with them". Thus the necessity of a sustainable economy based on a lower use of energy and water and a major utilization of the great quantity of the industrial green by-products poorly utilized, such as the fishery' waste and the marine biomaterials.