Exploring Montagu’s crab: Primary and secondary metabolites and enzyme inhibition

Abstract

Marine invertebrates are widely used as food and feed supplements throughout the world. Among these organisms, crustaceans are highlighted, which have high potential to provide valuable nutritive products. Montagu’s crab (Lophozozymus incisus (H. Milne Edwards)) is abundant in the north-eastern Atlantic Ocean and in the Mediterranean Sea. Nevertheless, this is a poorly studied crab and information about its compositional profile is needed to facilitate processing, utilization and marketing of value-added products. The main purpose of our work was to improve the knowledge on its chemical composition, in order to obtain more information on potential healthy constituents, as well as on its biological properties. A chemical characterization of the ethanol extract was performed by GC–MS and HPLC–DAD. Twenty-eight metabolites were identified and quantified for the first time in this crab. Astaxanthin and alanine were the main carotenoid (ca. 57.0% of total carotenoids) and amino acid (ca. 33% of total amino acid content), respectively. Concerning fatty acids, those unsaturated were predominated (ca. 86.0% of total fatty acids) and cholesterol was the only identified sterol. A dose-dependent response was revealed against cholinesterases, monoamino oxidase A (MAO-A) and α-glucosidase. Therefore, taking into account the biological properties of the identified metabolites, the consumption of this crab could have a positive impact on the human health.