Morphological change and cell disruption of haematococcus pluvialis cyst during high-pressure homogenization for astaxanthin recovery

Ramasamy Praveenkumar, Jiye Lee, Durairaj Vijayan, Soo Youn Lee, Kyubock Lee, Sang Jun Sim, Min Eui Hong, Young Eun Kim, You Kwan Oh

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    28 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Haematococcus pluvialis accumulates astaxanthin, which is a high-value antioxidant, during the red cyst stage of its lifecycle. The development of a rigid cell wall in the cysts hinders the recovery of astaxanthin. We investigated morphological changes and cell disruption of mature H. pluvialis cyst cells while using high-pressure homogenization for astaxanthin extraction. When treated with French-press-cell (pressure, 10,000-30,000 psi; passage, 1-3), the intact cyst cells were significantly broken or fully ruptured, releasing cytoplasmic components, thereby facilitating the separation of astaxanthin by ethyl acetate. Fluorescence microscopy observations using three different fluorescent dyes revealed that a greater degree of cell breakage caused greater external dispersion of astaxanthin, chlorophyll, lipids, proteins, and carbohydrates. The mechanical treatment resulted in a high cell disruption rate of up to 91% based on microscopic cell typing and Coulter methods. After the ethyl acetate extraction, the astaxanthin concentration significantly increased by 15.2 mg/L in proportion to the increase in cell disruption rate, which indicates that cell disruption is a critical factor for solvent-based astaxanthin recovery. Furthermore, this study recommends a synergistic combination of the fast instrumental particle-volume-distribution analysis and microscope-based morphologic phenotyping for the development of practical H. pluvialis biorefinery processes that co-produce various biological products, including lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, chlorophyll, and astaxanthin.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number513
    JournalApplied Sciences (Switzerland)
    Volume10
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2020 Jan 1

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2020 by the authors.

    Keywords

    • Astaxanthin
    • Cell disruption
    • Cyst
    • Haematococcus pluvialis
    • High-pressure homogenization

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Materials Science
    • Instrumentation
    • General Engineering
    • Process Chemistry and Technology
    • Computer Science Applications
    • Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes

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