The molecular mass of chitin in fungi is not
known. However, it was estimated that
bakers' yeast synthesizes rather uniform
chains containing 120 ฑ170 GlcNAc monomer
units which corresponds to ca. 24,000
34,500 Daltons (for a reference, see Valdivieso
et al., 1999). This is roughly one order
of magnitude lower than the estimated
molecular mass of chitosan isolated from
Mucoraceae (see below).Chitin and Chitosan in Fungi