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Chitosan has a broad and impressive array of applications in diverse industrial sectors, like pharmaceutics (drug delivery), gene delivery, tissue engineering, food and cosmetics industry, water treatment, and agriculture. To date, majority of the chitosan is produced from thermo-alkaline deacetylation of chitin from crustacean shells. The process is incompatible as it leads to variability in the product properties, increased cost of production, and environmental concerns. Functional properties and in turn industrial applicability of chitosan depend on its degree of deacetylation; hence, a controlled biological process needs to be developed so as to realize the commercial value of the product. Chitin deacetylase (CDA) is the key enzyme employed for bioconversion of chitin to chitosan. It catalyzes deacetylation of N -acetyl- d -glucosamine residues under mild reaction conditions and results into production of novel superior-quality chitosan. The enzyme-aided production is a vital step towards the chitosan production in the green chemistry realm as the chemical process is engraved with a number of limitations and bottlenecks. Apart from being used in bioconversion reactions, CDA has a number of biological roles, namely, formation of spore wall in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and vegetative cell wall in Cryptococcus neoformans, responsible for pathogenesis of plant pathogenic fungi, and utilization of chitin in marine ecosystems.