Comparative Study Highlights the Potential of Spectral Deconvolution for Fucoxanthin Screening in Live Phaeodactylum tricornutum Cultures |
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| Authors: | Sean Macdonald Miller Raffaela M Abbriano Anna Segecova Andrei Herdean Peter J Ralph Mathieu Pernice |
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| Institution: | 1.Climate Change Cluster (C3), Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia; (R.M.A.); (A.S.); (A.H.); (P.J.R.); (M.P.);2.Global Change Research Centre, Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, 26101 Drasov, Czech Republic |
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| Abstract: | Microalgal biotechnology shows considerable promise as a sustainable contributor to a broad range of industrial avenues. The field is however limited by processing methods that have commonly hindered the progress of high throughput screening, and consequently development of improved microalgal strains. We tested various microplate reader and flow cytometer methods for monitoring the commercially relevant pigment fucoxanthin in the marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum. Based on accuracy and flexibility, we chose one described previously to adapt to live culture samples using a microplate reader and achieved a high correlation to HPLC (R2 = 0.849), effectively removing the need for solvent extraction. This was achieved by using new absorbance spectra inputs, reducing the detectable pigment library and changing pathlength values for the spectral deconvolution method in microplate reader format. Adaptation to 384-well microplates and removal of the need to equalize cultures by density further increased the screening rate. This work is of primary interest to projects requiring detection of biological pigments, and could theoretically be extended to other organisms and pigments of interest, improving the viability of microalgae biotechnology as a contributor to sustainable industry. |
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| Keywords: | fucoxanthin microalgae green consumption food consumption |
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