Next, chitin, which is usually obtained from e.g., shrimp or crab shells, fungi cell walls, or exoskeletons of arthropods , was tested. As a note, for safety reasons, we used industrially available chitin instead of the raw biomass sources in this category. To our delight, the reaction afforded 8 wt% of GVL after 72 hours under the optimized reaction conditions (Table ). Extending the reaction conditions to 96 hours improved the yield to 13 wt%, corresponding to 29% yield or approximately 80% in every step of the seven-step cascade reaction. The comparatively lower yield from the chitin feedstock might be explained by the more challenging structure with a hard-to-hydrolyze amide unit contained in each carbohydrate unit or by the insoluble nature of chitin .