Abstract: In order to make full use of golden cuttlefish eyes, the enzymatic preparation of hyaluronic acid (HA) from the waste of golden cuttlefish processing was studied. The results of a comparison of 3 proteases showed that neutral protease was more suitable to hydrolyze golden cuttlefish eyes than pepsin and trypsin, providing an HA extraction yield of 6.64%. Employing one-factor-at-a-time experiments and response surface methodology, the optimal conditions for HA extraction by neutral protease-catalyzed hydrolysis were determined as follows: 8200 U/g enzyme amount and 60 ℃ for a reaction duration of 3 h. Under these conditions, the experimental extraction yield of HA was up to 10.70%, in close agreement with the predicted value. Accordingly, the established extraction process was accurate and feasible. It was also found that enzyme amount was the most important fact the affects extraction yield of HA followed by temperature and reaction time.

Key words: response surface methodology, golden cuttlefish eyes, hyaluronic acid, extraction