Abstract
Seaweeds have attracted high interest in recent years due to their chemical and bioactive properties to find new molecules with valuable applications for humankind. Phenolic compounds are the group of metabolites with the most structural variation and the highest content in seaweeds. The most researched seaweed polyphenol class is the phlorotannins, which are specifically synthesized by brown seaweeds, but there are other polyphenolic compounds, such as bromophenols, flavonoids, phenolic terpenoids, and mycosporine-like amino acids. The compounds already discovered and characterized demonstrate a full range of bioactivities and potential future applications in various industrial sectors. This review focuses on the extraction, purification, and future applications of seaweed phenolic compounds based on the bioactive properties described in the literature. It also intends to provide a comprehensive insight into the phenolic compounds in seaweed.
Highlights
Organisms living in aquatic habitats have been gaining more interest as the target of studies by numerous scientific groups that have mainly studied their pharmaceutical and biomedical properties, such as the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and neuroprotective activity of their large diversity of bioactive compounds [1,2,3,4,5].Seaweeds are considered the sea vegetables and the basis of life in the aquatic habitats, and they have been employed as fertilizer, human food, and animal feed from ancient to modern times [6,7]
Brown seaweed phenolic terpenoids have been mainly characterized as meroditerpenoids, meroditerpenoids, which are divided in plastoquinones, chromanols and chromenes, and these which are almost dividedsolely in plastoquinones, chromanols chromenes, and consist these are almost solely are found in the Sargassaceae
One of the main research studies of the red seaweeds bromophenolic compounds is the study of the compounds of the oncology area, with a lot of studies with isolated compounds having demonstrated interesting characteristics, as we demonstrate in this topic
Summary
Organisms living in aquatic habitats have been gaining more interest as the target of studies by numerous scientific groups that have mainly studied their pharmaceutical and biomedical properties, such as the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and neuroprotective activity of their large diversity of bioactive compounds [1,2,3,4,5]. The largest proportion of phenolic compounds present in green and red seaweeds are of bromophenols, flavonoids, phenolics acids, phenolic terpenoids, and mycosporine-like amino acids [24,25,26,27]. These molecules are considered secondary metabolites, as they are protective agents that are produced in response to different stimuli and are defense mechanisms of the seaweeds against herbivory and UV radiation [4]. This review aims to present a comprehensive insight into the seaweed phenolic compounds, providing important information about the current and potential status of these compounds from their origin to extraction and isolation methodology, highlighting the potential activities and commercial applications of these compounds in various industries or the potential to become new products
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