Isolation And Comparison Of Collagen Yield From Skin Of Rhizoprionodon acutus, Scomberomorus guttatus and Rachycentron canadum

Fish waste generation is estimated to be about 4 million metric tons in India, which is mostly dumped into the environment indiscriminately. A sustainable way of managing this waste is to valorise it by generating products like enzymes, bio-polymers and bioactive peptides suitable for biotechnological and pharmaceutical applications. Collagen, an abundant extracellular matrix protein, is a high-value product that can be extracted from fish waste like skin. In the current study, collagen has been isolated from the skin of three different species of fish - Rhizoprionodon acutus (Milk shark), Scomberomorus guttatus (Indo-pacific king mackerel) and Rachycentron canadum (Cobia fish). Acid and pepsin extraction methods were followed for isolation of collagen and the mean yield of collagen was calculated on a wet-weight basis. Attenuated Total Reflectance- Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (AT-FTIR) and Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate- Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) techniques were   carried out for characterisation of extracted collagen. Results showed that collagen yield was 10.81%, 7.91 and 3.62% for Rachycentron canadum (Cobia fish), Rhizoprionodon acutus (Milk shark) and Scomberomorus guttatus (Indo-pacific king mackerel) respectively. Characterisation confirmed that it was type I collagen and comparable with standard mammalian type I collagen. Fish skin can thus, be an acceptable source of type I collagen which can be explored  for diverse industrial applications