Agro‐Industrial Waste Based Phycocyanin Production from Oscillatoria sp. 50 A: daf‐16 Modulating Effect in Caenorhabditis elegans and p53 Dependent Apoptosis in HeLa cells

Abstract

AbstractCyanobacterial phycocyanin (C‐PC) has always been used in therapeutics and nutraceuticals. Herein we report, enhanced C‐PC production by Oscillatoria sp. 50 A through media optimization using response surface methodology (RSM) with two folds higher C‐PC yield (0.072 ± 0.001 mg/mL) in 30 days with optimized media containing 2.5 mL/L each of sugar industrial effluent (SE) and tannery effluent (TE) than normal BG‐11 medium. Moreover, C‐PC was successfully purified to homogeneity and characterized by FT‐IR, spectrofluorimetry and MALDI‐TOF peptide fingerprinting. The therapeutic efficacy of C‐PC was studied in vivo in hypercholesterol induced daf–16::GFP C. elegans, which evidenced prominent down‐regulation of daf‐16 (0.5 ± 0.2 fold) in C‐PC treated obese vs untreated obese worms. In another independent model study, the purified C‐PC exerted cytotoxicity in HeLa cells at IC50 value of 77.76 ± 2.41 μg/mL, which induced pro‐apoptotic p53 expression, indicating its potential implications as cancer therapeutic agent. Moreover, C‐PC does not induce any cytotoxicity or immune response on normal RAW 264.7 macrophage cells. Thus, the cost‐efficient way of hyper‐production of C‐PC from cyanobacteria Oscillatoria sp. 50 A can be achieved using agro‐industrial wastes such as SE and TE for versatile therapeutic applications in treatment of obesity and/or cancer.