Abstract
Abstract Cyanobacteria are a source of a variety of valuable substances. These include extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and natural dyes. EPS are produced by cyanobacteria to protect themselves against environmental stresses, serve as a water reservoir, and play an essential role in the formation of biofilms. They can be used, for example, due to their antimicrobial properties. Cyanobacteria are phototrophic organisms and synthesize the pigments chlorophyll a and carotenoids for photosynthesis. However, they also possess other light-harvesting complexes in the form of phycobilisomes, which combine with proteins to form so-called phycobiliproteins (PBP). These enable cyanobacteria to utilize a larger light spectrum than plants. Both the pigments and the PBP can be used as natural colorants and offer antioxidant properties, among other things, which enables applications in medicine. Methods for the combined extraction of EPS, PBP, and pigments have already been described in the literature. Still, in this work, the methods were simplified and optimized to obtain the best possible method for use in the laboratory. The optimized downstream process is based on an extraction of the EPS with deionized water followed by an extraction of the PBP with potassium phosphate buffer and finally the extraction of the pigments with methanol. The PBP and pigments are extracted by adding fixed ratios of solvents followed by a single extraction for a certain period. The universal applicability was demonstrated over a broad biomass spectrum from 4 mg to 80 mg dry mass and the method was transferred to several cyanobacterial strains.
Published Version
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