Isolation and Characterization of a Yellow Xanthophyll Pigment-Producing Marine Bacterium, Erythrobacter sp. SDW2 Strain, in Coastal Seawater.

Sun Wook Jeong,Yong Jun Choi,Jung Eun Yang

doi:10.3390/md20010073

Abstract

Xanthophylls, a yellow pigment belonging to the carotenoid family, have attracted much attention for industrial applications due to their versatile nature. We report the isolation of a homo xanthophyll pigment-producing marine bacterium, identified as the Erythrobacter sp. SDW2 strain, from coastal seawater. The isolated Erythrobacter sp. SDW2 strain can produce 263 ± 12.9 mg/L (89.7 ± 5.4 mg/g dry cell weight) of yellow xanthophyll pigment from 5 g/L of glucose. Moreover, the xanthophyll pigment produced by the SDW2 strain exhibits remarkable antioxidative activities, confirmed by the DPPH (73.4 ± 1.4%) and ABTS (84.9 ± 0.7%) assays. These results suggest that the yellow xanthophyll pigment-producing Erythrobacter sp. SDW2 strain could be a promising industrial microorganism for producing marine-derived bioactive compounds with potential for foods, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.

Highlights

We report, for the first time, the isolation and identification of pure xanthophyll pigment-producing marine bacterium Erythrobacter sp. strain SDW2
Through chromatographic profile and genome sequencing analysis, the yellow xanthophyll pigment produced by the SDW2 strain was predicted to be a zeaxanthin derivative
The SDW2 strain isolated in this study, unlike other marine microorganisms, can be a promising microbial host strain for industrial application due to its ability to produce homo-xanthophyll pigment, and its excellent performance in producing xanthophyll pigment

Summary

Introduction

Carotenoids are lipophilic isoprenoid compounds that widely occur in nature [1]. They are mostly found in living organisms, such as plants, fungi, algae, and bacteria, and play important biological roles in preventing cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and degenerative diseases through scavenging reactive oxygen species [2,3]. More than 700 carotenoids have been identified in nature, among which beta-carotene, lycopene, astaxanthin, lutein, and zeaxanthin are widely used as nutritional supplements, cosmetic ingredients, and pharmaceuticals [4]. Natural carotenoids have increasingly been in demand in recent years due to their unprocessed and natural properties compared to chemically synthetic carotenoids, which account for more than 70% to 80% of the total carotenoid market [5]. The discovery of microorganisms capable of producing natural carotenoids and the development of improved industrial microorganisms using metabolic engineering have been attracting attention [6–8]

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