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Inorganic salt starvation improves the polysaccharide production and CO2 fixation by Porphyridium purpureum

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Abstract

The microalgae industry shows a promising future in the production of high-value products such as pigments, phycoerythrin, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and polysaccharides. It was found that polysaccharides have high biomedical value (such as antiviral, antibacterial, antitumor, antioxidative) and industrial application prospects (such as antioxidants). This study aimed to improve the polysaccharides accumulation of Porphyridium purpureum CoE1, which was effectuated by inorganic salt starvation strategy whilst supplying rich carbon dioxide. At a culturing temperature of 25 °C, the highest polysaccharide content (2.89 g/L) was achieved in 50% artificial seawater on the 12th day. This accounted for approximately 37.29% of the dry biomass, signifying a 25.3% increase in polysaccharide production compared to the culture in 100% artificial seawater. Subsequently, separation, purification and characterization of polysaccharides produced were conducted. Furthermore, the assessment of CO2 fixation capacity during the cultivation of P. purpureum CoE1 was conducted in a 10 L photobioreactor. This indicated that the strain exhibited an excellent CO2 fixation capacity of 1.66 g CO2/g biomass/d. This study proposed an efficient and feasible approach that not only increasing the yield of polysaccharides by P. purpureum CoE1, but also fixing CO2 with a high rate, which showed great potential in the microalgae industry and Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the special fund for Fujian Ocean High-Tech Industry Development (No. FJHJF-L-2018-1) and the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province of China (No. 2019J06005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Energy, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, China

    Yinchen Li, Shengshan Wu, Haowei Chen, Chuang Li, Zhiqing Peng, Zheng Li, Jian Liu, Lu Lin & Xianhai Zeng

  2. Fujian Engineering and Research Center of Clean and High-Valued Technologies for Biomass, Xiamen Key Laboratory of Clean and High-Valued Applications of Biomass, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, China

    Yinchen Li, Shengshan Wu, Haowei Chen, Chuang Li, Zhiqing Peng, Zheng Li, Jian Liu, Lu Lin & Xianhai Zeng

  3. State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science/Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory for Coastal Ecology and Environmental Studies, College of the Environment and Ecology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, China

    Wupeng Xiao

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  1. Yinchen Li
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Contributions

LY and WS carried out the experiments and data analysis. LY, WS, CH, XW, LC, PZ, LZ, LJ and ZX wrote the manuscript. WS and ZX revised the manuscript. WS, XW, LL and ZX contributed to resource and methodology. ZX managed and supervised the project. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shengshan Wu or Xianhai Zeng.

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Li, Y., Wu, S., Chen, H. et al. Inorganic salt starvation improves the polysaccharide production and CO2 fixation by Porphyridium purpureum. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-024-03017-0

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