ABSTRACT
Chitosan is composed of randomly distributed glucosamine and N-acetyl-glucosamine monomers, and can be readily digested either by lysozymes or by chitinases (Aiba 1992, Hirano et al. 1988). Chitosan has been widely explored for its potential uses in a multitude of elds including cosmetics, food, sewage treatment, environmental protection, and biomedicine (Kim and Rajapakse 2005). Furthermore, because of its biodegradability, biocompatibility, nonallergenicity, and nucleic acid (NA)–binding ability, chitosan has recently been studied as a gene vehicle. To the best of our knowledge, the rst team to explore the potential of chitosan for in vitro plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid (pDNA) delivery is Mumper et al. (1995), who revealed the theoretical possibility of chitosan in NA delivery and offered a foundation for later research.
