Upcycling chitin-containing waste into organonitrogen chemicals via an integrated process

Significance Shell biorefinery is an emerging concept that upcycles the major component of crustacean shell waste and the like (chitin-rich) into value-added chemicals and materials. To date, the utilization of waste-derived chitin as carbon and nitrogen sources to produce value-added nitrogen-containing chemicals (NCCs) via microbial fermentation has been underexplored. The lack of a compatible pretreatment method in conjunction with a customized NCC-producing strain has placed a major impediment to the valorization effort. This study tackles this challenge by developing an integrated biorefinery process that combines an efficient pretreatment process with a highly customizable microbial engineering platform, opening a door for the better use of crustacean shell waste-derived chitin as a substrate for microbial manufacturing.