Abstract
Phaeodactylum tricornutum is a model diatom with numerous potential applications in the industry, including the production of high-value carotenoid pigments such as fucoxanthin. This compound is a potent antioxidant currently extracted mainly from brown macroalgae. Fucoxanthin exhibits several biological properties with well-known beneficial effects in the treatment and prevention of lifestyle-related diseases. P. tricornutum offers a valuable alternative to macroalgae for fucoxanthin production as it has a specific productivity that is 10-fold higher as compared with macroalgae. However, production processes still need to be optimised to become a cost-effective alternative. In this work, we investigated the optimal supplementation of nitrate in a cultivation medium that is currently used for P. tricornutum and how this nitrate concentration affects cell growth and fucoxanthin production. It has previously been shown that the addition of sodium nitrate increases productivity, but optimal conditions were not accurately determined. In this report, we observed that the continuous increase in nitrate concentration did not lead to an increase in biomass and fucoxanthin content, but there was rather a window of optimal values of nitrate that led to maximum growth and pigment production. These results are discussed considering both the scale up for industrial production and the profitability of the process, as well as the implications in the cell’s metabolism and effects in fucoxanthin production.
Highlights
Carotenoids are high-value pigments produced by photosynthetic organisms with several benefits in terms of health and nutrition
The global carotenoid market is expected to have a steady increase of 5% during the decade, with carotenoid sales likely to be over 2 billion US Dollars by 2031 [4]
Because humans and animals are unable to synthesise carotenoids and must ingest them through diet [5], carotenoids are often included in food and feed supplements to improve human and animal health and increase the product nutritional value
Summary
Carotenoids are high-value pigments produced by photosynthetic organisms with several benefits in terms of health and nutrition. We devised a strategy for the optimisation of the culture conditions of the brown microalgae P. tricornutum for the enhanced production of fucoxanthin This pigment offers remarkable biological properties, which are based on its unique molecular structure that is responsible for its high antioxidant activity. P. tricornutum is a promising source of fucoxanthin, since it contains at least ten times more fucoxanthin per gram of dry weight than brown algae [2], but the optimisation of yields needs to be further achieved The capacity of these microalgae to grow under mixotrophic cultivation, i.e., combining photoautotrophic and heterotrophic growth, increases the flexibility in cultivation conditions and leads to higher biomass concentrations compared with photoautotrophic conditions [24]. In this work, we investigated optimal sodium nitrate supplementation on P. tricornutum growth and fucoxanthin production
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