Chitinase cuticle degradation

The chitinases present in the insects have been described from Bombyx mori and Manduca sexta. These enzymes play important roles as degradative enzymes during ecdysis, where endochitinases break randomly the cuticle to chitooligosaccharides that afterwards are hydrolyzed by exoenzymes to GlcNAc. The monomer is reused to s mthesize a new cuticle. Insect chitinases also have a defensive role against their own parasites. The production of enzymes in insects is regulated by hormones during the transformation of the larvae (Kramer and Muthukrishnan, 1997 Arakane and Muthukrishnan, 2010). 

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