Phycocyanin is a water soluble, brilliant blue and highly fluorescent pigment-protein of the photosynthetic light-harvesting antenna complexes in, mainly, cyanobacteria, Rhodophyta and Cryptomonads. It is one of the few natural blue pigments available as food colourant, but it is also a safe bioactive compound having antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antiviral, immunity-boosting and other therapeutic activities. Phycocyanin has many biotechnological applications in food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical and medical sectors, as functional food, colorant, fluorescent tag, drug, photosensitizer in cancer photodynamic therapy.We have developed an innovative two-step extraction process to obtain bright blue phycocyanin crude extracts with high purity grade P (within 2.5 and 3.5) directly from fresh biomass of Arthrospira platensis Gomont 1892 (commonly named Spirulina). We found out and for the first time exploited ammonium sulphate capability to minimize the release of water soluble phycobiliproteins in aqueous medium during ultrasound-assisted cell lysis/purification phase. The conventional sequence which is, extraction followed by purification, was reversed. The extraction phase was decoupled from biomass cell lysis. Cell lysis, accomplished by ultrasonication in ammonium sulphate solution, was merged with purification in a single step, before the pigment extraction/recovering phase. The process was entirely carried out in aqueous solutions. No downstream purification was required to obtain products suitable for the most common phycocyanin applications (i.e. foods, nutraceuticals and cosmetics). Production time, hours instead of days, was reduced to the advantage of the product quality. The process benefits are: (1) direct use of extracting solutions that cannot be used in the ordinary ultrasound-assisted extraction of phycocyanin (because of the extensive simultaneous extraction of contaminant molecules), (2) gain of high commercial value phycocyanin due to the elevated purity grade and (3) direct production of highly concentrated bright blue pigment crude extracts (up to about 5 mg mL-1) immediately in hand to the market.
Bioactive phycocyanin recovery - an innovative approach to get concentrated blue pigment of high purity grade
Rosaria Lauceri
2023
Abstract
Phycocyanin is a water soluble, brilliant blue and highly fluorescent pigment-protein of the photosynthetic light-harvesting antenna complexes in, mainly, cyanobacteria, Rhodophyta and Cryptomonads. It is one of the few natural blue pigments available as food colourant, but it is also a safe bioactive compound having antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antiviral, immunity-boosting and other therapeutic activities. Phycocyanin has many biotechnological applications in food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical and medical sectors, as functional food, colorant, fluorescent tag, drug, photosensitizer in cancer photodynamic therapy.We have developed an innovative two-step extraction process to obtain bright blue phycocyanin crude extracts with high purity grade P (within 2.5 and 3.5) directly from fresh biomass of Arthrospira platensis Gomont 1892 (commonly named Spirulina). We found out and for the first time exploited ammonium sulphate capability to minimize the release of water soluble phycobiliproteins in aqueous medium during ultrasound-assisted cell lysis/purification phase. The conventional sequence which is, extraction followed by purification, was reversed. The extraction phase was decoupled from biomass cell lysis. Cell lysis, accomplished by ultrasonication in ammonium sulphate solution, was merged with purification in a single step, before the pigment extraction/recovering phase. The process was entirely carried out in aqueous solutions. No downstream purification was required to obtain products suitable for the most common phycocyanin applications (i.e. foods, nutraceuticals and cosmetics). Production time, hours instead of days, was reduced to the advantage of the product quality. The process benefits are: (1) direct use of extracting solutions that cannot be used in the ordinary ultrasound-assisted extraction of phycocyanin (because of the extensive simultaneous extraction of contaminant molecules), (2) gain of high commercial value phycocyanin due to the elevated purity grade and (3) direct production of highly concentrated bright blue pigment crude extracts (up to about 5 mg mL-1) immediately in hand to the market.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
